Senior Manager - Strategic Partnership Management

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. As part of Team Amex, you'll experience this powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career.

Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express.

How will you make an impact in this role?

The Acquiring Partners, Product and Strategy Team (APPS) within Merchant Services U.S. (MS-U.S.) is tasked with making American Express “Welcomed Everywhere and Used Every Day” – an important strategic focus for the company. The APPS Partner Management team leads the relationships across several partnership models with innovative FinTech companies, traditional Merchant Acquirers or Banks, and specialized Payment Aggregators to achieve this mission. Come and join the APPS Partner Management team and lead the way in American Express winning at omnichannel acceptance through our partnerships.

We are constantly evaluating potential talent for Senior Manager roles managing several of our partnerships in our portfolio, which can range from $100M to $50 BN in annual American Express spend (i.e., Square, Adyen, Fiserv, Global Payments). The roles are a great mix of relationship management, business development and strategy.

The relationships we manage in the team are intricate and critical for American Express to achieve our strategic objectives for Merchant acceptance. The role is multifaceted and requires building relationships across external and internal stakeholders at various seniority levels. You will own the strategic development of your account(s) and be responsible for driving profitable business initiatives. You will also lead the day-to-day relationships to implement tactical initiatives that will drive growth through our partnerships. 

Responsibilities:

•      Key lead for business development discussions, contract negotiations and managing the overall partner relationships for an assigned portfolio of partners.

•      For Adyen, act as the key lead on global initiatives with the partner including key contract negotiations and new market entry.

•      Act as the internal point of contact and subject matter expert on your portfolio, formulating a perspective on the external landscape to bring into American Express. This includes preparing C-suite briefings on your partners.

•      Deepen senior level relationships with partners to help strategically position American Express.

•      Partner with internal Marketing and Analytics teams to design and implement initiatives that increase merchant activation, drive Welcomed Acceptance and deliver incremental value to our partners.

•      Project manage new partner and capability launches (e.g., Digital Receipts, Tokenization, Cross Border acceptance) by working closely with internal stakeholders and partner leads to ensure successful and timely launches.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Excellent partnership and/or client management skills (industry agnostic) with a demonstrated ability to influence C-level executives at business partners.

• Self-starter with the ability to think creatively and strategically in a world of evolving payment trends and innovations.

• Proven ability to work through complex business and operational opportunities to identify clear action plans, drive resolution and to do so in a matrix organization with multiple stakeholders.

• Detail oriented project management skills and the ability to manage multiple accounts and initiatives in parallel.

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