Manager of Global Payments
Moves money out of the company across countries, currencies and banks — reliably, cheaply, and with a reconciliation trail. Not the same job as accounts payable, and not procurement.
Who to hire
The shape of person who does this job well — and whether you should be hiring it at all yet.
A genuine specialism, and a tell about the business model: a company paying people in many countries treats payments operations as core rather than back office. Hire when you move money at volume across borders; before that, finance does it.
Education
Finance or accounting commonly; treasury and payments knowledge matters more than the degree.
Experience
6+ years in treasury, payments operations or banking, with multi-currency experience and at least one banking or PSP migration. Ask how they handled a failed payment run — the answer reveals whether they have controls or luck.
Vertical / domain experience
Heavily domain-specific: card rails, bank rails, local clearing schemes, FX and sanctions screening are separate bodies of knowledge. Corridor experience matters — someone strong in SEPA and the US may not know India's or Brazil's requirements. Worth separating from two roles it is often confused with: accounts payable decides that the company owes a supplier and approves the invoice; procurement decides what to buy and from whom, and negotiates the terms. Payments operations takes an approved obligation and makes the money arrive — the rail, the currency, the timing, the screening and the reconciliation. In a company under about fifty people one person does all three, and the control that still matters is that whoever approves an invoice is not the only person who can release the payment.
What it pays, roughly
$118,851 median, Canada — for Managers in financial and business services, the closest occupation Statistics Canada actually measures, measured from $102,398 to $123,198 over 216,805 people. That occupation is broader than this role, so read it as an anchor, not a salary band — and note that a startup usually pays below it in cash and above it in equity.
Credentials and certifications
What exists, who issues it, and whether it means anything for this seat. A credential is evidence of a floor, never of judgment — and in a few of these roles it is a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
| Credential | Issued by | When it matters | Skiploma |
|---|---|---|---|
| CTP — Certified Treasury Professional | Association for Financial Professionals | The core credential for this role. | Study |
| CAMS — Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist | ACAMS | Directly relevant once you touch other people's money or screen counterparties. | Study |
| CPA | CPA Canada / AICPA | Common and useful where the role also owns reconciliation and controls. | Study |
What this role does at each stage
The same title means three different jobs depending on how much money is in the bank. Read the stage you are at, then read the next one — that is what you are hiring toward.
The founder's bank account and a corporate card. Keep personal and company money strictly separate from day one — commingling is expensive to unwind in diligence.
Finance generalist with dual authorisation on anything above a threshold the board sets.
A specialist if money movement is material or cross-border, with documented segregation between initiating, approving and reconciling a payment.
Can one person hold this and something else?
The whole point of the many-hats problem: which of these jobs merge safely into one person, and which merges quietly cost you money or control.
Merges well with
- Chief Financial Officer (Founders & fractional leadership)
- Corporate Accountant
- Manager, Technical Accounting and Reporting
At seed this is the CFO or the controller. The merge that must not survive growth is initiating and approving payments in one person — that is the single control auditors and insurers look for first.
Keep separate from
Separation of duties: whoever can initiate a payment should not be the only person who can approve it, regardless of seniority or trust.
Reading a candidate
What good looks like in an hour, and what should stop the process.
Good signals
- Describes controls in terms of who cannot do what
- Knows the cost per payment per corridor
- Reconciles daily, not monthly
Red flags
- Optimises FX cost ahead of reconciliation integrity
- Single-handed access to the banking portal and comfortable with it
- No sanctions screening view
What this role runs on
The software categories this job lives in. Each links to our buying brief and to the research behind it.
| Category | Who the default is | What leaving costs | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Embedded Payments & Fintech for Vertical Software — renting the rail | Stripe (Connect) and Adyen (Adyen for Platforms) at the infrastructure layer; the merchant-acquirer giants (Global Payments, which now owns Worldpay… | Medium-high for the merchant, low-to-medium for the platform | The research → |
| ERP — Enterprise Resource Planning | SAP | Implementation sunk cost | The research → |
| RegTech & Financial Crime Compliance | NICE Actimize and Nasdaq Verafin | — | The research → |