Director of Citi Pay Commercialization

Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately two hundred million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. For the past two hundred years at Citi, we have a drive to help clients move from ambition to achievement. Our company has been one of the foundational components of today’s modern financial infrastructure—this gives us a level of unmatched expertise in tackling the world’s most complex challenges and connecting across capabilities to enable lasting progress for our clients. Diversity is a key business imperative and a source of strength at Citi. We serve clients from every lifestyle, every background, and every origin. Our goal is to have our workforce reflect this same diversity at all levels. Citi has made it a priority to foster a culture where the best people want to work, where individuals are promoted based on merit, where we value and demand respect for others and where opportunities to develop are widely available to all.

Citi’s U.S. Personal Bank (USPB) has a unique opportunity to leverage its consumer relationships and footprint, state of the art technology and leading consumer banking position to deliver customer value in a targeted and impactful way.

Citi Retail Services (CRS) is a leading provider point-of-sale lending products including consumer and commercial private label, consumer co-branded as well as consumer digital lines of credit and installment loan productsacross the U.S. and Canada. Retail Services, serves ninety million accounts for many iconic brands, including The Home Depot, Best Buy, ExxonMobil, Macy's, and Shell, among others. The business also provides retail industry expertise, including digital integration, transaction data analytics, and fully integrated marketing and loyalty programs.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Considering evolving consumer expectations and retail paradigms as well as the rapid emergence of non-traditional entrants in the payments space, CRS will continue to play a key role in ensuring Citi’s position as the undisputed B2B2C point-of-sale lender of choice for merchant partners. Our Connected Commerce embedded payments strategy enables the introduction of new capabilities, robust product strategies, expanded partnerships and new revenue streams. This strategy, coupled with our best-in-class vertical management strategy including Franchise and Specialty merchants will continue to strengthen our diversified business model and an unlock an expanded target client model – enabling us to provide both our existing and new partners with expanded products, a more streamlined integration and speed to market.

The Director of Citi Pay Commercialization will play a critical role in unlocking our ability to achieve the scale required for the Connected Commerce platform. The role will report to, and directly support the Director of Connected Commerce Commercialization. The role is responsible for defining the Citi Pay growth agenda including but not limited to ensuring the distribution of the Citi Pay products and platform across Citi internal businesses and channels to achieve and maximize scale.

This individual will be responsible for setting the strategy, identifying growth opportunities, enabling both internal and external strategic partnerships, and maximizing opportunities to deliver expanded Citi customer relationships and new merchants at scale. This individual will be responsible for building business case for investment, aligning resources – investment dollars, resources, and technology – to ensure cross functional alignment and flawless execution against key opportunities and business priorities.

This individual will work across Citi to articulate a strong value proposition and overall branding strategy and be the voice of the merchant partner to influence the strategic product and program roadmaps. This individual will lead the creation and ongoing management of a team to support these strategic responsibilities and imperatives.

This individual will partner with the CRS senior leadership in multiple forums across USPB to ensure the Citi Pay growth strategy is aligned with and supports both current and future merchant partner objectives, enables broader distribution opportunities, drives product and vertical expansion while delivering the right outcomes for CRS, Citi and our merchant partners resulting in market growth and revenue contribution.

This individual will also work closely with a set of peers across a team format that will be specifically focused on evolving Connected Commerce products and platform capabilities for the business to meet customer and merchant expectations. The team will be responsible for facilitating the growth and evolution of Connected Commerce over iterative generations to drive sales and loyalty for current and future merchants by offering world class digital credit products, seamless digital servicing and digitally led integration tools.

This role will require an individual with business knowledge, exceptional relationship management, communication and influencing skills at all levels, a strong focus on strategic execution with a background in commercialization, business development, and sales leadership. Excellent collaboration, communication and negotiation skills are required, often at a senior level. Necessitates a degree of responsibility over technical strategy.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the development and execution of comprehensive commercialization strategies, including market assessment, pricing strategies, product positioning and go-to-market plans, to drive successful adoption of Citi Pay products, ensure market penetration and be held accountable for delivering GMV targets.
• Define, align, and execute a cohesive strategy for Citi Pay across multiple business divisions within Citi including CRS, USPB, Services (TTS), Commercial Bank (CCB), and Investment Bank (BCMA) ensuring synergy, consistency, and optimal utilization of resources to achieve overarching organizational goals focused on the implementation and adoption of the Citi Pay strategy with existing bank clients.
• Operate at the leading edge of point-of-sale lending and payments – defining optimal go-to-market strategies, identifying potential disruptors within the industry, and developing proactive strategies to ensure products remain competitive, innovative, and aligned with evolving market dynamics.
• Ensure strategic alignment of investments with high-priority growth objectives, conducting thorough analysis and evaluation to optimize resource allocation and maximize return on investment.
• Foster and cultivate strong cross-functional relationships with leaders throughout the organization, collaborating effectively to drive alignment, facilitate communication, and achieve common goals to deliver Citi Pay objectives and priorities.
• Utilize a deep understanding of both the internal organization and external market dynamics to deliver concise, impactful executive-level responses and presentations, effectively articulating strategic insights and recommendations.
• Identify and grasp key organizational priorities and navigate complex issues, developing clear and actionable plans to address challenges and drive progress across the broader organization.
• Lead and inspire high-performance outcomes in business development and relationship-based selling to drive exceptional results through strategic planning, relationship management and effective execution.
• Consult and align leaders, peers, and partners to ensure that business objectives are focused on the development of sustainable and systemically responsible solutions.
• Appropriately assess risk when business decisions are made, demonstrating consideration for the firm's reputation and safeguarding Citi, its clients, and assets, by driving compliance with applicable laws, rules, and regulations, adhering to Citi policy, applying sound ethical judgment regarding personal behavior, conduct and business practices, and escalating, managing, and reporting control issues with transparency.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years’ experience in Financial Services with a specific focus on POS lending, Payments and Fintech.  The individual must understand both consumer and merchant flows and have a demonstrated track record scaling point-of-sale lending solutions via merchant partnerships.
• Experience negotiating multi-year strategic merchant relationships and an ability to demonstrate the organizational value (e.g., revenue and returns) associated with the relationships
• Ability to operate and influence across various c-levels internally and externally to deliver the stated outcomes.
• Stated and demonstrable experience having delivered multi-billion dollars in GMV in the payments space
• Proven record in successfully commercializing products or services, with a demonstrated ability to navigate market complexities, drive innovation, and deliver tangible business results.
• Understands consumer financial services businesses, POS financing and operating model.
• Strategic mindset coupled with analytic and financial acumen.
• Demonstrated ability to synthesize information, prioritize objectives and drive results with a high sense of urgency.
• Ability to translate data and metrics from across different constituencies to create clear and concise executive presentation materials.
• Highly organized and meticulous.
• Able to create support across a wide range of stakeholders through well-developed interpersonal and influencing capabilities.
• Possesses excellent written and verbal communications skills.
• Able to work through a large, complex matrix organization; demonstrates a flexible approach and resilience to setbacks.
• Promotes a culture of collaboration and teamwork across organizational boundaries; willing to break down business and/or functional silos to optimize results.
• Franchise player; broad, critical thinker, initiative-taking; comfortable working with ambiguity.
• Organizationally savvy; understands systems, management processes, knows where to go for information and how to interpret.
• Pragmatic problem solver, forward thinker with independence of thought.

Education:

• Bachelor’s/University degree or equivalent experience, master’s degree preferred.