Head of Payments

At Vio we believe booking accommodation should feel smart, fair, and effortless — never overwhelming or unclear.

As one of the world’s fastest-growing travel tech platforms, we help millions of users make smarter travel decisions by comparing stays across booking sites — so they can find the perfect place, at the best price, anywhere in the world. We cut through the noise and complexity of hotel and vacation rental booking, surfacing real value with clarity, transparency, and full support. No tricks. No confusion. Just great stays — booked with confidence. With operations in 100+ markets and growing fast, our mission is to reshape how people discover and book accommodation through technology travelers can trust.

We are looking for someone to lead Payments within our Online Travel Agency (OTA) Merchant of Record (MOR) business. Payments is a major driver of unit economics and conversion at our scale, and will be a critical capability as we grow toward €1B+ in volume.

The Head of Payments will own the payments strategy and operations for the OTA business line: building a scalable multi-rail setup, improving acceptance in priority markets, reducing cross-border and FX cost, and ensuring MOR operations (refunds/disputes, reconciliation/settlements, compliance) scale smoothly.

With approximately 35% partner & commercial strategy, 25% payments performance optimization, 20% platform direction, and 20% MOR operational excellence, this is a senior role requiring strong payments domain expertise, cross-functional leadership, and a pragmatic approach to building capability with meaningful ROI.

What You Will Do

Payments Strategy, Acquiring & Partner Portfolio

• Define payments strategy and build the 2026–2027 payments roadmap aligned with the company’s expansion plans

• Design and manage a portfolio approach, including market prioritization and local acquiring expansion in priority growth markets

• Own commercials end-to-end: pricing negotiation across processing, FX, disputes/refunds, settlement currencies, and SLAs

• Partner closely with the Checkout/Monetisation Product Lead to align the payments roadmap with checkout conversion goals, localisation and payment method strategy, authentication decisions (3DS/SCA), and rollout plan

Payments Performance Optimisation

• Establish and run a regular payments performance cadence (dashboards, issues, experiments, outcomes)

• Run structured optimisation loop through issuer pattern analysis, soft/hard decline strategy, 3DS/SCA strategy, retries, and failover

• Improve unit economics by separating and optimising cost drivers: scheme/interchange, PSP/acquirer markup, FX, disputes/refunds, and fraud

Payments Platform Direction

• Define the “primitives” for multi-PSP integration: routing, token strategy, observability, and reporting model

• Introduce multi-rail capability and establish dynamic routing + automated failover with incident guidelines and observability

• Partner closely with the Payments and Checkout engineering and analytics to ensure payment expansion doesn’t fragment data or stored credentials and remains scalable.

MOR Operations Excellence

• Implement stronger and scalable MOR operations (disputes/refunds workflows, reconciliation/settlement automation, fraud management)

• Define FX & settlement strategy to reduce FX spread and avoidable conversions (including refund economics), in partnership with Finance & Supply teams

• Build and manage the payments operating model and hiring plan

Who You Are

• 10+ years in payments (acquiring/PSPs/payment methods), ideally in travel, marketplace, fintech, or other MOR-like environments

• Proven experience designing and scaling multi-PSP / multi-acquirer setups and improving authorisation performance using practical levers

• Strong commercial negotiation track record across processing fees, FX, settlement currencies, disputes/refunds, and SLAs

• Comfortable partnering with engineering on architecture: APIs, orchestration concepts, token strategy, observability, and reporting models

• Solid operational understanding of MOR payments at scale: disputes/refunds, reconciliation/settlements, fraud, and partner operations

• Strong cross-functional leader who can align Product, Engineering, Finance/Treasury, Legal/Compliance, and Customer Support toward shared goals

• Structured thinker, independent self-starter, and excellent communicator who can influence senior leadership in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment

What Success Looks Like in This Role

• A clear and trusted payments roadmap aligned to business expansion, with the right level of complexity for ROI

• A second payment rail live and expanding where it matters, with measurable uplift in acceptance and/or net cost

• A regular performance cadence that consistently improves approval rate, conversion, and resilience

• MOR operations (refunds/disputes, reconciliation/settlements, fraud) scale with minimal escalations and clear ownership

Why join us now?

• We are one of the most innovative and fastest-growing accommodation booking platforms in the world today, serving 5 million customers a year and aiming far further.

• We are a passionate and diverse team of tech enthusiasts and creatives with a commitment and focus on the traveler above all else - and it shows in our industry-leading TrustPilot score;

• We place huge importance on rewarding our employees for the value they generate by giving Stock Appreciation Rights to all employees.

Do you want to know if Vio is the right place for you? Find out by reading about the attitude that thrives at Vio.

What we offer

• Plenty of chances to learn and grow within an open, diverse culture which promotes knowledge sharing, trust and transparency;

• A great compensation package, perks and benefits (including significant stock appreciation rights);

• Flexible time off (take as many holidays as you need) and a chance to work remotely;

• You will be part of a highly international team that enjoys working, eating and playing together in one of the best office locations in Amsterdam;

• We value good food and offer catered lunches from various cuisines, great coffee, and the occasional barbecue in our garden;

• We enjoy getting together to celebrate our wins with company events in Amsterdam and abroad;

• A budget for your dream home office;

• Access to free mental health support via OpenUp.

Please note: Although this role can be remote, we are only considering candidates based in GMT-/+3 timezones to optimise team and work alignment.

We encourage people from all ethnic groups, genders, sexuality, ages and abilities to apply. If this job description resonates with you, we want to hear from you!

Blog posts worth reading:

• Vio.Com: Re-imagining Metasearch for Travelers

• Our Core Values and What they Mean to our People

Follow us on Instagram to see what life at Vio.com looks like!