Director Legal Compliance

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Director Legal Compliance

Overview
Mastercard Transaction Services (MTS) enables Mastercard to deliver regulated payment products through licensed entities across multiple jurisdictions.
We are seeking an experienced Financial Crime Compliance professional to lead Compliance governance and oversight of the MTS new product intake process across fiat and digital products.
Reporting to the Global MTS Compliance VP, Governance, Risk and Controls, the Director will provide financial crime compliance oversight and advisory support throughout the product lifecycle, ensuring that new products and material enhancements are appropriately risk assessed, governed and supported by effective compliance controls prior to launch.
The role will work closely with Product, Compliance Technology and Systems, Compliance Operations, Legal, Regulatory Compliance, Finance, Global Compliance and MTS Entity MLRO teams.

Key Responsibilities
• Lead Compliance governance and oversight of new product intake across MTS fiat and digital products.
• Assess new products and material enhancements to identify inherent AML, sanctions, fraud and other financial crime risks.
• Complete and maintain required financial crime risk assessments, providing SME input into entity-level and enterprise-wide risk and control assessments.
• Define and maintain the new product intake governance framework, process flow and key controls, driving consistent adoption across products and MTS entities.
• Oversee pre- and post-implementation financial crime systems and technical requirements, working with Compliance Systems, Technical Design/Model teams, Compliance Operations and MLRO teams.
• Ensure product-related compliance requirements are appropriately reflected across technology, systems, operational controls and policy frameworks.
• Provide governance reporting to relevant forums, including the MTS Compliance Committee and MTS Change Initiatives Forum.
• Maintain the New Product Intake Register, including the status of Compliance reviews, approvals, exceptions and dispensations, and ensure timely follow-up.
• Identify and drive remediation of gaps arising from internal or external issues, events and control assessments to strengthen the overall intake process.
• Support the wider MTS GRC team with risk assessments, issue management, reporting and design assurance relating to new product intake.
• Lead Compliance coordination across relevant Product, Legal, Finance, Regulatory Compliance, Global Compliance and MTS Entity teams.
• Provide Compliance governance and oversight for digital asset and crypto product intake, including VASPs, crypto card programmes, stablecoins such as USDC and PYUSD, Send Crypto, Crypto Credential and other emerging digital payment propositions.

Required Experience and Technical Skills
• Compliance experience, ideally within international payments, transactional banking, regulated fintech or a comparable global financial services environment.
• Demonstrable experience developing and implementing financial crime controls within new product intake or product approval processes.
• Strong understanding of AML, KYC, sanctions, fraud, transaction monitoring and investigation processes there by supporting enterprise wide transformation programmes
• Good project management skills.
• Strong understanding of how new products impact Compliance operations, technology, systems, controls and policy frameworks.
• Experience or strong knowledge of card payments, digital commerce, cross-border payment flows and blockchain analytics.
• Strong understanding of crypto compliance and VASP-related risks, ideally within a regulated fintech, payments or crypto-native environment.
• Familiarity with advanced and automated compliance systems, including AML, sanctions and fraud alert management. Exposure to the use of AI in Compliance is a distinct advantage.
• Experience in process mapping, compliance framework development, control design, process automation and scalable Compliance solutions.
• Proven ability to operate in a complex global matrix environment, across multiple jurisdictions, time zones and stakeholders.
• Strong communication and influencing skills, with the ability to challenge constructively, influence senior leaders and articulate clear, risk-based recommendations.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, interpersonal and organisational skills.
• Holder of a globally recognised Financial Crime Compliance qualification.
• Proficient in Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Visio.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.