Director Payments Resume

Candidate Pitch:

Experienced leader with over two decades of expertise in merchant, brand, and banking payment processes. Instrumental in devising and executing comprehensive customer payment strategies aligned with organizational goals. Specialized in merchant payments strategy, cost optimization, partnership management, financial analysis, and cross functional collaboration with a keen focus on market and industry trends and their implications across every department in an organization. Understands how to navigate complex financial, governmental, and highly matrixed organizations, bringing clarity to senior management and decision-making. Demonstrated success in aligning stakeholders and driving transformational change that impacts the bottom line. Vindicia, Issaquah, WA Customer Engagement Director May 2022 – Aug 2023 • Manage relationships with domestic and international enterprise merchants to understand their subscription, authorization, and payments pain points to maximize their success with companies' SaaS platform. • Instrumental in developing long-lasting relationships with several at-risk merchant customers; several key enterprise customers specifically requesting my assistance. • Developed education and learning for the 500-member organization on merchant payment practices. • Provide remote hands-on leadership support to internal teams elevating adoption, maximizing customer retention, and offsetting departing customers. Redbox Automated Retail, Seattle, WA Head of Payment Strategy Oct 2018 – May 2022 • Provided payment analysis and future projections to senior leadership, and internal departments including Finance, Product Management, Engineering, Risk, Legal, and others. • Fully manage payment partnerships, including acquirers, card brand networks, and key vendors; included contract negotiations, SLA and rules adherence, as well as influencing their strategy and product roadmap. • Led payment projects and collaborated with Cross-Functional teams to formulate use cases, and deploy solutions that reduce costs, increase revenue, add functionality, and reduce consumer pain points. • Completed acceptance improvements resulting in $5MM YoY cost savings and revenue increases. • Led efforts to complete payment rules exemptions and changes resulting in $7MM realized revenue. • Facilitated the launch of EMV acceptance at over 43k locations resulting in $2MM in savings. • Participate in payment industry groups and task forces to influence industry direction, as well as identify and evaluate innovations for execution pertaining to various Alternative Forms of Payment (crypto, RTP, ACH, BNPL, etc.). • Forecasted, performed modeling, and developed short and long-term KPIs to identify and reduce costs. • Repaired a fractured relationship with the payment processor and helped reset expectations and priorities. Alaska Air Group, Seattle, WA Sr. Manager and Head of Payments Mar 2015 – Sep 2018 • Establishing and maintaining industry best practices in payment card acceptance by serving as the payment industry subject matter expert (SME) • Managed $6 billion in mainly e-commerce payments across 100 locations and 10 sales channels. • Managed all facets of card brand (5), acquirer (3), and gateway (2) relationships. • Established the company's first formal Fraud Prevention operation resulting in a 500% improvement ($500k) in fraud reduction. • Hired, managed, and coached all Agents and Supervisors. • Directed the consolidation of payment authorization and settlement services for the merger of Alaska and Virgin America. • Project owner for outsourcing payment card settlement services to a third-party provider. • Managed the credit risk, collection, and accounting of a $25 million commercial credit receivable • Oversaw a team of 20 staff by assessing performance, identifying skill gaps, evaluating training needs, to improve productivity and efficiency; was key in increasing employee engagement and satisfaction by 15%. Amtrak, Washington, DC Director / Sr. Manager Apr 2008 – Feb 2015 Amtrak is wholly owned by the US Government and operates as the National Railroad Passenger Corporation • Oversaw $2.1 billion in Card Present (CP) and Card Not Present (CNP) payments across 100 different stations and 6 unique sales channels. • Managed all facets of card brand and acquirer relationships. • Coordinated with partners in analyzing and managing the Amtrak Co-Brand Card offering. • Mitigated the legal and political implications of payments related class action settlements, working with legal and corporate affairs to leverage benefits and minimize risks. • Led efforts to reduce interchange and the payment cost of acceptance resulting in a reduction of downgraded transactions to less than 1% of sales. • Authored and managed a payment processing (acquiring) services RFP process resulting in a 25% fee reduction, and $100 million reserve risk reduction. PRIOR WORK EXPERIENCE Sr. Manager - Payment Card Controls, Advanta Bank Manager – Credit Card Integrity, Sinclair Oil Corporation Card Project Manager / Team Manager / Customer Service Rep, Discover Card Westminster College, Salt Lake City, UT Master of Business Administration The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT Bachelor of Science - Psychology The University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT Bachelor of Science – Sociology Payments Roadmap Execution Contract Negotiation Team Leadership Payment Cost Optimization Payment KPI’s Fraud Prevention Strategic Relationships Management Payment Analytics Process Improvement Cross-Functional Collaboration eCommerce Payments Alternate Forms of Payment www.linkedin.com/in/dan-pehrson/