Vice President, Payments Product Manager, Services

Japan Payments Product Management

The successful candidate will join the Japan Payments team, focusing on strategically managing and driving business development and innovation in the Japan market. This role demands a highly experienced and influential leader who will effectively act as the "CEO" of your product portfolio. This portfolio includes digital assets and solutions in the eCommerce space, leveraging Citi's traditional payment, commercial card, and payment acceptance capabilities. This role encompasses full ownership of strategy, advanced product development, robust risk and controls, and aggressive commercial growth, all while ensuring full alignment with the dynamic regulatory environment and driving superior financial performance. You will be at the center of a large network of partners, orchestrating efforts to deliver truly market-leading solutions. This is unequivocally a strategic Product Management role, focusing on visionary market strategy, end-to-end business ownership, and driving significant P&L impact.

What You'll Do:

• Define and Execute Vision: Set the strategic vision and long-term roadmap for key payment solutions for your product portfolio, ensuring alignment with global Payments strategy and market opportunities.
• Drive P&L Ownership: Take full accountability for the P&L growth of your product portfolio, proactively identifying market shifts, understanding complex client needs, and leading the creation and commercialization of winning client solutions from conception to market dominance.
• Strategic Leadership: Provide decisive leadership in assessing and defining requirements, and overseeing the successful, compliant implementation of critical regulatory mandates and strategic initiatives across payment solutions.
• Architectural & Experiential Oversight: Develop a deep, strategic understanding of the payments application architecture—not just in its current state, but how it can be evolved to optimally support critical payment flows and deliver a best-in-class end-to-end client experience.
• Modernization & Innovation Driver: Spearhead modernization initiatives, driving product innovation, end-to-end project execution, and ensuring the successful market adoption of next-generation payment capabilities.
• Influence & Shape Strategy: Critically contribute to and shape the overarching strategy of Payments in Japan, collaborating with cluster and global teams to continuously enhance our client proposition.
• Proactive Risk Management: Expertly assess and manage risk with a 'CEO mindset' when making critical business decisions, pre-empting and mitigating potential systemic risks, and escalating, managing, and reporting any issues with the utmost transparency and urgency.
• Lead AI Integration: Champion and lead high-impact AI-related initiatives within the payments product space, identifying opportunities for competitive advantage and operational efficiency.

What We'll Need From You:

• Extensive, demonstrable experience in Product Management, including business and strategic leadership experience within the payments landscape, is required.
• A proven track record as a "Payments Product Leader" with end-to-end P&L responsibility, market strategy definition, and the ability to influence and drive large-scale initiatives as the owner of their product portfolio is essential.
• Exceptional leadership and executive communication skills: The ability to inspire, influence, and align diverse senior stakeholders across a complex global organization, as well as external parties including clients, local regulators, the central bank, bankers' associations, and industry peers.
• A deep and strategic understanding of payment processing, including not just traditional bank transfers but also card and alternative payment method frameworks, messaging standards (e.g., ISO 20022), regulatory frameworks, and data flows, coupled with a forward-looking perspective on emerging payment technologies and market trends.
• Proven ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment, effectively managing multiple competing priorities simultaneously.
• Experience in successfully defining, developing, and launching complex, market-leading payment solutions.
• Mastery in business case development and presenting compelling strategic proposals to senior leadership.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, with the ingenuity and creativity to resolve complex, novel, and ambiguous situations.
• Advanced risk management acumen: A strategic mindset for assessing, documenting, and managing business and regulatory risk within a dynamic product environment.
• Demonstrated ability to drive cross-functional collaboration, fostering a culture of shared ownership and excellence.
• Experience with AI initiatives and their strategic application in payments is highly desirable.
• A deep understanding of the global regulatory frameworks relevant to payments, as well as the local regulations and applicable laws for the Japan payments business. This includes the Banking Act, Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Act, Act on Prevention of Transfer of Criminal Proceeds, Installment Sales Act, and Payment Services Act.
• Native-level proficiency in Japanese with strong capabilities in professional discussion and public speaking is required.
• Bachelor's degree/University degree or equivalent experience.