Head of Credit & Fraud Risk

Head of Credit & Fraud Risk

Location

Saket, New Delhi (Work From Office)

10-15 years in Fraud Risk, Credit Risk, or Payments Risk (with team leadership experience)

Tazapay is a Series B-funded, global cross-border payments company building infrastructure to simplify international payments. We enable businesses to send and receive payments across borders seamlessly while managing FX, compliance, and risk complexities under the hood.

Tazapay works with global merchants, fintechs, marketplaces, exporters, SaaS platforms, and enterprises, supporting multiple countries, currencies, and payment rails. As we scale across geographies and corridors, fraud risk at onboarding becomes mission-critical—this role sits at the heart of that challenge.

We are looking for a Head of Credit & Fraud Risk to own Tazapay’s end-to-end risk strategy across the merchant lifecycle — from onboarding to live transaction monitoring to ongoing portfolio risk management.

This is a leadership role responsible for defining risk strategy, managing a team of 5–6 risk specialists, and partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Operations, and Financial partners. The role balances growth enablement with loss prevention, using data, automation, and judgment to scale safely.

The function covers:

• Merchant Onboarding Risk
  
  

• Transaction & Behavioral Fraud Monitoring
  
  

• Credit Exposure & Portfolio Risk Management
  
  

• Own and evolve Tazapay’s global credit & fraud risk strategy across products, corridors, industries, and payment methods

• Build, manage, and mentor a high-performing team (5–6 members) covering onboarding, transaction monitoring, and portfolio risk

• Define clear risk ownership, escalation frameworks, approval authorities, and exception handling

• Act as the final decision-maker for high-risk merchants, escalations, and material risk exceptions

• Oversee end-to-end fraud and credit risk assessment during merchant onboarding

• Evaluate early credit risk signals such as business model viability, settlement risk, chargeback exposure, and expected flow behavior

• Define and continuously refine onboarding risk policies, risk scoring frameworks, and approval thresholds

• Balance growth and risk by enabling controlled onboarding of higher-risk but strategic use cases

• Own real-time and post-transaction fraud monitoring strategies across payment rails

• Define rules, alerts, thresholds, and workflows to detect:

  • Payment fraud

  • Velocity abuse

  • Account compromise and misuse

• Partner with Product and Engineering to design automated detection, case management, and intervention systems

• Continuously tune controls to reduce fraud losses while minimizing false positives and customer friction

• Own ongoing portfolio-level credit and fraud risk monitoring

• Track merchant-level exposure, settlement risk, dispute trends, and behavioral drift

• Define exposure limits, reserves, rolling reviews, and intervention triggers

• Proactively identify deteriorating merchants and lead mitigation actions (limits, holds, pricing, off-boarding)

• Provide regular portfolio risk reporting to senior leadership

• Drive a data-driven risk culture using SQL, dashboards, and analytical deep dives

• Monitor key risk metrics: fraud rates, credit losses, chargebacks, approval rates, false positives, TAT, and leakage

• Partner with Product & Engineering to:

  • Build rule engines and decision systems

  • Integrate AI/ML-based risk tools

  • Automate manual workflows wherever possible

• Ensure risk systems scale with transaction growth and new corridor launches

• Work closely with Payment Operations, Compliance, Finance, Financial Partners, and leadership team on risk-related matters

• Provide risk input into new product launches, corridors, and payment methods

• Support audits, partner due diligence, and regulator queries related to fraud and credit risk

• Act as a trusted risk advisor to Sales and Partnerships teams

• 10–15+ years in fraud risk, credit risk, or payments risk roles at fintechs, PSPs, banks, or global payment companies

• Prior experience leading and scaling risk teams

• Deep understanding of cross-border payment fraud typologies and credit risk dynamics

• Strong hands-on data capability (SQL proficiency strongly preferred)

• Experience designing or operating transaction monitoring and onboarding risk frameworks

• Proven ability to balance commercial growth with disciplined risk management

• Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills

• Experience with AI/ML-driven fraud systems or risk decisioning platforms

• Exposure to multiple payment rails (cards, local APMs, bank transfers, alternative rails)

• Experience launching new geographies or high-risk corridors

• Background in high-risk verticals (marketplaces, remittances, SaaS, crypto-adjacent)

• Familiarity with regulator and banking partner expectations around fraud & credit controls