Director, Payments Performance - Product

CLEAR - Corporate•New York, NY

12h•$234,000 - $275,000

About The Position

CLEAR is seeking a Director, Payments Performance to own how money moves through the company, improving payment authorization, renewal recovery, fraud and dispute outcomes, and cost of acceptance. Reporting to the SVP of Product, this role turns insights from issuers, networks, processors, and Members into product strategy, experiments, and measurable business outcomes. The Director partners with the Payments Product Lead, who owns the payments platform and Member-facing experiences. This role focuses on system performance and translating payment insights into action with product teams and external processors, networks, and issuers. The position works across Product, Finance, Analytics, Engineering, and Member Support to improve payment performance and economics as CLEAR expands into new products, partnerships, and markets. The stated base salary range is $234,000–$275,000, with compensation varying according to factors such as location, education, skills, experience, and performance. Total compensation also includes an annual bonus incentive and new-hire equity, with eligibility for ongoing refresh equity grants.

Requirements

At least 10 years of deep payments experience on the merchant or acceptance side of a high-volume consumer or subscription business, processor, or card network, with direct accountability for authorization and payment performance.
Expert knowledge of card payment economics and transaction lifecycles, including issuer decisioning, recurring billing, decline optimization, network tokenization, account updater, stored credentials, fraud and disputes, and network monitoring programs.
Experience working directly with data and SQL, developing analyses such as decline waterfalls, and translating payment insights into product decisions and measurable business outcomes.
Track record of partnering directly with processors, networks, and issuers to diagnose systemic issues, improve performance, negotiate effectively, and drive accountability.
Strong product and commercial judgment, including experience partnering with Product and Engineering to ship improvements, design rigorous experiments, and balance Member experience, revenue, fraud risk, and payment economics.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end payment performance, including first-attempt authorization, renewal recovery, involuntary churn, fraud and chargeback performance, false-positive rates, and effective cost of acceptance.
Diagnose payment performance across issuers, networks, card types, wallets, channels, and Member cohorts; establish a single source of truth and prioritize opportunities based on decline patterns.
Define and drive the authorization and recovery roadmap with Product, Engineering, and Analytics, optimizing retry and dunning strategies, network tokens and account updater, stored credentials, transaction messaging, routing, wallets, fraud controls, and authentication.
Lead performance relationships with processors, card networks, and issuers; hold partners accountable to benchmarks, resolve systemic approval issues, and evaluate routing, acquiring, and processor strategy.
Partner with Product, Finance, Analytics, Engineering, and Member Support to run rigorous experiments, balance approval gains with fraud and dispute exposure, improve payment economics, and evolve CLEAR’s payments strategy.
Improve first-attempt authorization, failed-renewal recovery, payment-related involuntary churn, fraud and dispute outcomes, and effective cost of acceptance.