Payments Operational Manager

Company Overview:

Lightspeed is the leading provider of cloud-based software for dealerships, serving the Powersport, Marine, RV, Trailer, and Golf Car industries adding hundreds of dealerships to the Lightspeed community each year.

Lightspeed’s Dealer Management Solution (DMS) enables dealerships to optimize their end-to-end business operations, including Sales, Parts, Service, Rentals, Payments, Accounting, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). When implemented into their daily operations, Lightspeed helps dealers increase their profitability by selling more units, service, and parts, all while creating a more streamlined experience for customers.

Lightspeed is the most complete and integrated DMS in the industry with over 500 integrations with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), aftermarket parts and accessory distributors and dozens of other software tools that a dealership may use to run their business. Uniquely designed by dealers for dealers, and refined over the past 4 decades, Lightspeed empowers over 4,500+ dealers across North America with the tools and technology they need to manage their dealerships.

Role Overview:

The Payments Operational Manager is responsible for the operational health, stability, and efficiency of the company’s integrated payments offering across powersports, RV, marine, and related industries. This role owns the processes, controls, and oversight that ensure merchants are onboarded efficiently, transactions flow correctly, funds are settled accurately, risk is managed, and performance targets are achieved.

Partnering closely with the Payment Solutions Team and other Lightspeed teams, this role translates payments strategy into day-to-day execution, serving as the cross-functional leader for payments operations across Product, Engineering, Finance, Risk/Compliance, Customer Support, and external partners.

What you'll Do:

• Own day-to-day payment operations, including transaction monitoring, exception handling, and issue escalation for in-person and card-not-present payments across the platform.
• Manage and optimize merchant onboarding workflows (KYC/KYB, underwriting, approvals, declines) in a PayFac or PayFac-as-a-Service operating model.
• Oversee settlement, funding, and reconciliation processes, partnering with Finance and Accounting to ensure timely, accurate payouts to dealers and alignment with financial reporting.
• Develop, document, and continuously improve standard operating procedures (SOPs), SLAs, and playbooks that support scalable, high-quality payments operations.
• Monitor operational health at the client, region, and system-wide levels, proactively identifying anomalies, incidents, and trends that impact dealers or end customers.
• Lead triage, escalation, and resolution of operational issues, coordinating across internal teams and external partners to restore service and communicate clearly with stakeholders.
• Establish and maintain dashboards and reporting for key operational and commercial metrics, including authorization rates, funding timelines, exception volumes, chargebacks, and SLA adherence.
• Own the definition, tracking, and reporting of performance criteria for the payments business: margin achievement, revenue, growth, and retention.
• Prepare and present regular performance updates (weekly/monthly/quarterly) for the executive and senior leadership teams, highlighting trends, risks, and recommended actions.
• Collaborate with Risk and Compliance to maintain controls for fraud monitoring, disputes, and regulatory requirements.