Senior Business Analyst / SME – Card Scheme Clearing & Settlement (Independent Contractor)

We are ONLY seeking senior experts with deep back-office card-payments experience.This is NOT a merchant-services, POS, ISO, onboarding, gateway, or front-end payments role.Candidate does not have to be in the UK as the job is remote.Contract: 12 months renewable • Full-time • Remote

We require a Senior Business Analyst / Subject Matter Expert with hands-on, detailed functional expertise in card-scheme clearing & settlement systems across Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and other regional schemes.

We work globally helping a top tier customer base modernise their businesses to continually capture opportunities and grow. We scale and expand and now have a specific role for a star performer to join our team. 

This is a technical–functional back-office advisory role supporting the modernisation of a multi-scheme clearing/settlement and billing platform. You will guide deep requirements, analyse file formats, support vendor evaluation, and act as a domain SME across operations, finance, technology and scheme interfaces.

Must-Have Experience (non-negotiable)Card-Scheme Clearing & Settlement

• Deep end-to-end understanding of multi-scheme clearing & settlement processing
• Strong expertise with scheme file formats and specifications, such as:
• Visa BASE II / SMS / ICSR
• Mastercard GCMS / IPM
• American Express settlement data formats
• Regional domestic scheme clearing files (e.g., APAC, EMEA, LATAM schemes)
• Exception, reject, and suspense handling
• Interchange fee rules, assessment/program fees, and fee-table management
• Settlement cycles (daily, intra-day, T+X), cut-offs, funding flows
• Chargebacks, disputes and representments (back-office)

Merchant / Issuer Back-Office

• Consolidation of merchant transactions for settlement
• Billing engines (daily/monthly) including complex fee constructs
• Revenue-share logic, partner settlement flows
• GL posting, internal/external reconciliation (scheme, issuer, acquirer, GL)

Compliance / Mandates

• Card-brand compliance cycles and mandate updates
• Experience using or preparing for dual-run/parallel migration periods
• Scheme certification and operational readiness assessments

Delivery & SME Background

• Senior BA / PO / SME within a card processor, issuer/acquirer back-office, scheme operations team, or specialist payments consultancy
• Proven ability to operate as an independent expert, not requiring supervision
• Strong requirements gathering, functional design, mapping and vendor-evaluation capability

Would be good to have (but not essential)

• Exposure to instant payments / A2A / real-time rails / account-to-account clearing
• Wallet settlement, tokenised payments, or BNPL back-office experience
• Familiarity with platforms such as: ACI, FIS, Fiserv, TSYS, Tietoevry, Global Payments, CGI, Worldline, Nexi, etc.

Strictly Excluded ProfilesDo NOT apply if your background is in:

• Merchant services, POS, ISO, terminals, gateway integrations
• Acquiring sales, merchant onboarding, account management
• Product-only roles without scheme clearing/settlement depth
• Pure fraud/risk/KYC roles
• Data analysts without card-scheme functional expertise

What You Will Do

• Lead functional requirements for scheme clearing & settlement modernisation
• Analyse scheme file formats, settlement logic, fee structures
• Support vendor evaluation & scoring for a new clearing/settlement platform
• Advise operations, finance, technology and compliance teams
• Ensure alignment with multi-scheme rules and future-state readiness
• Provide SME input during migration planning and compliance change cycles