Director of KYC Strategy

About Payoneer

Founded in 2005 Payoneer is the global financial platform that removes friction from doing business across borders with a mission to connect the worlds underserved businesses to a rising global economy. Were a community with over 2500 colleagues all over the world working to serve customers and partners in over 190 countries and territories.

By taking the complexity out of the financial workflowsincluding everything from global payments and compliance to multi-currency and workforce management to providing working capital and business intelligencewe give businesses the tools they need to work efficiently worldwide and grow with confidence.

Role Purpose
In this role you will own the strategy design and transformation of KYC Operations across Payoneers 190 markets with a specific mandate to leverage AI and automation to improve customer experience quality and role defines the future-state KYC service model including how AI augments reviewers powers self-service onboarding and enables faster risk-based is a strategic partnership role that works with Compliance Product and regional Operations to deliver systemic improvements at scale.

Location: Glilot Israel

Key Responsibilities

KYC Operations Strategy & Roadmap:
Define and own the KYC operations strategy roadmap aligning it with Payoneers growthtargets global compliance obligations and risk appetite.
Continuously improve end-to-end KYC workflows across customer onboarding anddocument review and define segmented service models that tailor KYC treatment reviewdepth and onboarding experience to customer type risk tier and market.
Process Improvement & Automation:
Identify and drive automation and AI opportunities across the KYC lifecycle to reducemanual effort improve accuracy accelerate decision times and improve customerexperience.
Define and own KPIs for KYC operations lead root-cause analysis on operationalbottlenecks and translate findings into structured improvement initiatives.
Technology & Product Partnership:
Partner with Product to define requirements for KYC tooling vendor integrations andplatform enhancements and to build the AI-assisted review and self-service capabilitiesthat reduce manual workload.
Cross-Functional Alignment:
Serve as the operational voice in compliance policy discussions ensuring new regulatoryrequirements are implemented through operationally viable scalable processes.
Collaborate with regional operations leads to adapt global KYC frameworks to localmarket requirements.
Governance & Quality:
Establish quality assurance frameworks and operational controls across the KYC reviewlifecycle own operational readiness for regulatory audits and external examinations anddefine escalation paths exception-handling procedures and SLA governance structures.

Requirements
8 years in KYC compliance or financial crime operations with at least 3 years in astrategy or senior leadership role at a global SaaS fintech or payments company.
Proven track record of delivering operational improvement and AI/automationtransformation programs in a high-volume global environment from strategy throughexecution and change management.
Deep understanding of KYC/KYB frameworks AML regulations and risk-basedapproaches to customer due diligence.
Experience applying AI in KYC or compliance operations to improve throughput anddecision quality including defining use cases and partnering with product to implementthem responsibly within a regulated environment.
Strong analytical and structured problem-solving skills with the ability to turn ambiguousdata into clear priorities plus solid business-process design experience (processmapping workflow documentation and change management).
Exceptional communication influencing and stakeholder-management skills able topresent complex operational and regulatory topics clearly to senior leadership andinfluence without authority across product technology compliance and regional teams.
Operationally rigorous but commercially minded comfortable navigating ambiguity andcollaborative by nature.
Curious about emerging AI capabilities with the judgment to balance innovation againstregulatory and ethical guardrails.
Nice to have: experience at a cross-border payments platform serving emerging markets.