Fraud Strategy Specialist (Card Issuance)

Felix Technologies•Miami, FL

15d

About The Position

At Félix, we're building the financial ecosystem for Latin immigrants in the U.S., starting with a revolution in remittances. Our core product is an AI-powered chatbot built on WhatsApp, allowing our users to send money home as easily as sending a text message. We leverage cutting-edge technology like AI, blockchain, and stablecoins to make cross-border payments faster, more affordable, and more accessible than ever before. We are a hyper-growth Series B company, backed by over $100 million in funding from top-tier global investors. Félix is building a new card issuance program, and with it, a new fraud surface: we'll own authorization decisioning end-to-end and carry direct exposure to card network fraud and dispute monitoring. This is a build role — there's no existing card fraud stack to inherit, and our infrastructure partner isn't a fraud team, so the decisioning architecture gets built by this role, from the ground up. We're looking for a Fraud Strategy Specialist to own that build: turn our vendor's area-of-responsibility split into a real decisioning architecture, keep us under network fraud and dispute thresholds from day one, and design the authorization strategy using the full toolkit — step-up authentication, velocity controls, holds, product-level friction — not rules as the default answer. Rules are a last resort here, not the first move.

Requirements

4–7+ years in fraud/risk strategy, with direct, hands-on experience in card authorization decisioning — issuer, acquirer, program manager, or processor side.
Working knowledge of card network mechanics: authorization/clearing/settlement flow, 3DS/SCA, network fraud-monitoring programs (Visa VAMP or equivalent, Mastercard excessive chargeback programs), and dispute reason codes.
Experience working with or evaluating BaaS / program-manager card issuing vendors (Stripe Issuing, Marqeta, Galileo, or similar), including fraud AoR/RACI negotiation.
Advanced SQL — hard requirement, not a nice-to-have. This person needs to independently query and size risk, not route it to an analyst.
Demonstrated bias toward product and action-based fraud controls (step-up auth, holds, dynamic friction) over rules as the default fix.
Comfortable building in ambiguity on a 0-to-1 program — translating vendor documentation, legal, and compliance input into an actual operating model.
Strong cross-functional communication; this role sits at the intersection of Fraud, Product, Compliance, and an external vendor.
Advanced English.

Nice To Haves

Prior experience specifically with card issuing at a fintech or program manager (rather than acquiring-side or card-not-present e-commerce fraud only)
Familiarity with stablecoin-backed card programs or general crypto experience
Spanish or Portuguese, given the LATAM corridor focus
Background in cross-border remittance or LATAM-market fraud
Experience negotiating or managing a BIN sponsor / issuing bank relationship

Responsibilities

Own fraud strategy for the card issuance program end-to-end — from pre-launch risk assessment through steady-state monitoring after go-live.
Translate our infrastructure partner's area-of-responsibility split into an operating decisioning model.
Design and own authorization decisioning for card transactions: approve/decline logic, 3DS/SCA step-up, velocity limits, cross-card/cross-account linkage — biased toward product and action-based controls over static rule sprawl.
Own network-level fraud health. Monitor fraud-to-sales and dispute ratios against card network thresholds (Visa's VAMP, Mastercard's excessive chargeback program) and build the early-warning system that keeps us out of penalty territory before it's a problem, not after.
Build the cardholder fraud lifecycle: onboarding risk, first-card-use monitoring, BIN- and portfolio-level pattern detection.
Partner with Product and Engineering to embed controls into the card issuance and wallet funding/spend flow directly, instead of bolting rules on after the product ships.
Own card dispute and chargeback strategy (network reason codes, representment approach) in partnership with Fraud Operations.
Be the fraud voice in ongoing vendor conversations — our current issuing infrastructure partner and any future ones — keeping the requirements doc current as the program evolves.
Use SQL/BigQuery hands-on to size fraud exposure, backtest authorization thresholds, and monitor post-launch indicators, iterating fast as real transaction data comes in.
Build the playbook, not just the launch — so the next card product or market expansion plugs in without renegotiating fraud ownership from scratch.