---
title: 'Vice President of Payments (High-Risk) at Phoenix Ecommerce Technologies'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/vice-president-of-payments-high-risk-phoenix-ecommerce-technologies-united-gw8xfv35mtc7'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-15'
---

# Vice President of Payments (High-Risk) at Phoenix Ecommerce Technologies

- **Company:** Phoenix Ecommerce Technologies
- **Location:** United States
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** remote
- **Posted:** 2026-08-25
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-15
- **Apply:** https://jobs.lever.co/phoenixtechnologies/50acc462-cd7c-4b51-a884-7ebfed4129b1

## Job description

Phoenix is the Autonomous Commerce Platform for DTC Founders. We unify storefronts, checkout, payments, and operations into one platform where AI agents handle the operational grind and merchants focus on growth. We set out to build the "Shopify of Direct Response" and along the way recognized something bigger. Direct response is roughly a third of all ecommerce transactions, a trillion-dollar market chronically overlooked by Silicon Valley. The merchants who run it are obsessive about tooling. They live and die by velocity, conversion, and margin. They have no brand moats. They only compete on operations, which is exactly what makes them ripe for agentic disruption and the earliest, fastest adopters of AI agents in commerce. That insight reframed Phoenix from "the Shopify of DR" to the AI Agent Platform for DTC Founders. This is a category-defining bet, and we are running at it from a position of strength.

Where We Are Today

- 8-figure ARR growing 100%+ YoY

- Strong unit economics and efficient growth

- Rapid merchant adoption and expanding market presence

- Backed by experienced operators and investors with a history of building and scaling successful businesses

## Why Now

This is a rare opportunity for a technical leader to step into a company with proven revenue, product-market fit, an established team, and a large market opportunity.

Three things make this an inflection point:

- Product-market fit is established. Demand continues to grow, merchant adoption is accelerating, and Phoenix is outperforming expectations.

- There is an opportunity to define a category. While many companies are building AI tools for commerce, few are focused on helping sophisticated DTC operators automate revenue-generating decisions at scale.

- Our customers are AI-ready. They adopt technology quickly when it drives measurable business outcomes, creating an ideal environment for agentic products.

## The Role

We are hiring a Vice President of Payments to own Phoenix's high-risk payments business end to end, the P&L, the risk posture, the bank and processor relationships, and the operating engine that moves merchant volume.

This is the most senior payments role at Phoenix. You will own underwriting, risk, payment operations, partner strategy, and payments GTM strategy (both revenue and product) as a single business rather than a set of separate functions. The Director of Payments Risk, along with the underwriting and risk teams, reports into this role.

Phoenix processes for direct response ecommerce merchants within nutraceuticals, supplements, skincare, clothing, accessories, and subscription and continuity offers. That is deliberate. It is also unforgiving. The difference between a profitable portfolio and a terminated BIN is judgment, monitoring discipline, and the strength of your bank relationships.

This role requires someone who already knows this industry. It is not a role where a generalist payments leader learns high-risk on the job. You should have lived through a VAMP or VDMP escalation, defended a portfolio in front of an acquirer, structured a merchant nobody else would board, and known when to walk away.

You will work closely across:

- Merchant underwriting

- High-risk ecommerce and card-not-present

- Merchant acquiring and sponsor bank relationships

- Fraud and chargeback risk

- KYC/AML and compliance

- Payment operations, funding, and residuals

- Product, Sales, and Client Success

## What You'll Own

Payments P&L

Own the revenue strategy (ICP, pricing), cost, and margin of the high-risk payments business as a standalone business unit. Although the sales team does not report into you, you will have high influence on how we go-to-market.

You will own:

- Processing revenue recognition, interchange, and net effective rate

- Merchant pricing and pricing governance

- Residual and revenue share economics with ISOs, agents, and referral partners

- Cost of processing, gateway, and vendor spend

- Loss reserves, write-offs, and net risk cost

- Contribution margin by merchant and by portfolio segment

- Forecasting and reporting that lets leadership see payments revenue, risk exposure, and margin in a single view

Risk & Underwriting

Own Phoenix's risk appetite and the policy framework that enforces it.

This includes:

- Underwriting policy, approval authority, and escalation thresholds

- Reserve strategy, rolling holds, and processing limits

- Portfolio concentration limits by vertical, bank, and processor

- Chargeback and fraud thresholds and the remediation playbooks behind them

- Ongoing portfolio monitoring, periodic reviews, and offboarding decisions

- Client comms in collaboration with the Sales and Client Success teams

The end goal is to keep the portfolio inside Visa and Mastercard monitoring program thresholds — VAMP, VDMP, VFMP, and MATCH/TMF, while volume continues to grow.

Bank, Processor & Partner Strategy

Own the relationships that determine whether Phoenix can board merchants at all.

- Sponsor bank and acquiring relationships: sourcing, negotiating, and defending them

- Processor, gateway, and orchestration partnerships

- Redundancy and diversification so no single bank or processor is a point of failure

- Schedule A negotiation, buy rates, and cost structure

- Audit readiness, ISO/MSP registration, and ongoing compliance reporting

- New market, new vertical, and new geography expansion

Payment Operations

Own the operating engine for the Payments team

- Merchant onboarding, KYC/KYB, activation, and time-to-board

- Funding, settlement, reconciliation, and residual accuracy

- Chargeback mitigation tooling including Ethoca, Verifi, VMPI, RDR, and CDRN

- Authorization performance, decline recovery, and payment routing

- SOPs, SLAs, dashboards, and the automation roadmap

Payments as a Growth Engine

Treat payments as a driver of merchant growth and Phoenix revenue, not a cost of doing business.

- Approval rate and authorization optimization

- Attach rate of Phoenix payments across the merchant base

- Payment product roadmap in partnership with Product

- Pricing and packaging that grow both merchant volume and Phoenix margin

- New payment types and rails where they serve merchants, including ACH, RTP, and alternative payment methods

## Team & Leadership

- Recruit, develop, and retain underwriters, risk analysts, and operations leaders

- Set clear performance standards and accountability systems

- Build a culture of precision, urgency, and ownership

- Serve as the executive voice of payments to the CEO, the board, banks, and partners

## What We're Looking For

Required

- 8+ years in payments, merchant acquiring, or fintech, including at least 5 years directly in high-risk

- Proven ownership of a payments P&L, portfolio, or business unit, not solely a functional team

- Direct experience with ISO, MSP, PayFac, or sponsor bank models

- Existing relationships with acquiring banks, sponsor banks, processors, and gateways

- Deep working knowledge of Visa and Mastercard monitoring programs (VAMP, VDMP, VFMP, MATCH/TMF) and the corrective action each requires

- Demonstrated experience underwriting and managing high-risk ecommerce verticals such as nutraceuticals, supplements, skincare, peptides, and subscription or continuity offers

- Command of KYC/AML, PCI DSS, NACHA, and card network rules

- Experience setting reserve, rolling hold, and processing limit strategy at the portfolio level

- Track record of holding chargeback and fraud ratios inside card brand thresholds while growing volume

- Ability to make fast, independent, defensible risk decisions with incomplete information

- Experience building and leading underwriting, risk, or payment operations teams

- Strong analytical skills and fluency operating from portfolio data and dashboards

## Preferred

- Experience at an ISO, PayFac, high-risk acquirer, or payments-enabled commerce platform

- Experience standing up a new bank or processor relationship from scratch

- Experience recovering a portfolio from a monitoring program or bank remediation

- Experience with embedded payments, ISV, or platform payments monetization

- Familiarity with direct response, DTC, and subscription commerce

- Exposure to ACH, RTP, and alternative payment methods

- Experience in a fast-paced startup or high-growth payments environment

- Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, or a related field

Leadership Traits We Value

- High ownership

- Decisiveness

- Strong recruiting and talent development capabilities

- Accountability

- Product judgment

- Calm under pressure

- Builder mentality

Culture

These are the values that guide how we operate:

- All In to Win — Operate with urgency, intensity, and a relentless bar for excellence.

- A Players Only — Only hire, develop, and keep A players. Protect talent density.

- Merchant First — Merchants are why we exist. Every decision measured by merchant impact.

- Entrepreneurial Spirit — Move like a Day One company. Fast, scrappy, hungry. Everyone owns.

- Execution Over Ego — Best ideas win regardless of source. Status and titles do not matter.

## About Phoenix Ecommerce Technologies

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Phoenix Ecommerce Technologies builds an all-in-one AI-native operating system that unifies storefronts, checkouts, payments, and CRM for direct-response merchants.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Venture-backed; $5M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: Fort Lauderdale / Miami, Florida, United States
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Kevin Zhang (CEO) & Trevor Galvin (Co-Founder & Chief Growth Officer)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Technology, Information and Internet – ecommerce infrastructure, payments, and software.
- **Target customers**: Direct-response merchants, D2C brands, and Shopify stores generating $500K+ revenue per year (B2B).
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "Our mission is to build a generational company: the AI-native operating system that the internet's most ambitious commerce runs on." [phoenixtechnologies.io/careers](https://phoenixtechnologies.io)

## Products & Services
- **[Phoenix Platform]**: A unified OS that combines landing pages, checkout, payments, subscription billing, chargeback defense, and analytics. It helps merchants maximize revenue with less than 1% disruption. [phoenixtechnologies.io/FAQ](https://phoenixtechnologies.io)
- **Checkout Builder**: High-converting checkout with PayPal, Apple Pay, and Reddit Pixel support.
- **Payment Processing**: Merchant account (MID) management, including a high-risk ISO called **Phoenix Payments**.
- **Dynamic Subscripion OS**: Automated billing, step-down salvage logic, and rebill retires that can improve approval rates up to 18%. [phoenixtechnologies.io/faq](https://phoenixtechnologies.io/faq)
- **Chargeback Defense**: Triple-layer integration with Disputely, Disputifier, and Chargeblast (RDR, Ethoca, CDRN).
- **Net Revenue Analytics**: Real-time dashboards and reporting.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (privately held).
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $5 M (venture round on 2025-11-16). Also reports "8-figure ARR" and "hundreds of merchants." [phoenixtechnologies.io/careers](https://phoenixtechnologies.io/careers)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Investor names not publicly available. Partners/payments integrations include Disputely, Disputifier, Chargeblast, PayPal, Apple Pay, Reddit Pixel.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount jumped from ~7 to 32 in a year (+389% YoY). Growing 100%+ year-over-year. Claims to be in the top 0.5% of all 2024 startups. [linkedin.com](https://linkedin.com/company/phoenixecommerce) [phoenixtechnologies.io/careers](https://phoenixtechnologies.io/careers)

## Competitive Advantages
- **All-in-one AI-native platform** built specifically for the underserved direct-response segment.
- **Revenue performance**: Delivers +20% more revenue per checkout vs competitor platforms, with <1% disruption.
- **Founder-led with deep ecommerce experience**: CEO Kevin Zhang generated $200M+ in bootstrapped D2C revenue; CPO Tim Schulz led product at BigCommerce, Google Shopping, Magento, and VTEX. [phoenixtechnologies.io/about](https://phoenixtechnologies.io/about)
- **Triple-layer chargeback defense** and advanced subscription salvage logic.

## Strategic Focus
- Continue scaling the "operating system of performance commerce" by deepening AI-native capabilities (agents, automation) and expanding Phoenix Payments to become a fully independent ISO.
- Grow merchant base in high-volume direct-response verticals while maintaining capital efficiency.

## Why Work Here
- **Remote-first**: Work from anywhere in the US; high autonomy and accountability.
- **Culture**: "Direct, fast-moving, and focused on results" – zero bureaucracy, founder-led, and operator-built. [phoenixtechnologies.io/careers](https://phoenixtechnologies.io/careers)
- **Perks**: Competitive cash + equity, 100% health & dental coverage, 401K.
- **Engineering team**: Roles include VP of Engineering, Staff Engineer (AI-native commerce), and Senior Full-Stack Engineer. Focus on building a best-in-class platform for ambitious merchants. [jobs.lever.co](https://jobs.lever.co/phoenixtechnologies)
- **Growth trajectory**: Rapidly growing startup with real revenue traction – a rare chance to have outsized impact.

## Sources
1. [LinkedIn Company Page](https://linkedin.com/company/phoenixecommerce)
2. [Phoenix Technologies Career Page](https://phoenixtechnologies.io/careers)
3. [Phoenix Technologies About Page](https://phoenixtechnologies.io/about-phoenix-technologies)
4. [Phoenix Technologies FAQ](https://phoenixtechnologies.io/faq)
5. [Lever Job Postings](https://jobs.lever.co/phoenixtechnologies)

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