A senior SME role responsible for leading complex KYC, EDD, and financial-crime investigations within a high-volume payments environment. The position focuses on safeguarding the payments ecosystem by identifying high-risk merchants, monitoring rapid-velocity transactions, and enhancing AML/fraud controls that support fast onboarding and scalable risk management.
Client Details
The organisation is a small-sized financial services firm, offering a range of services such as, Payments, Acquiring Crypto and Corp Banking services.
Description
*Lead complex KYC and EDD investigations for individuals, SMEs, and higher-risk payment merchants, validating business models, processing flows, and jurisdictional exposure.
*Assess merchant acquiring and PSP-specific risks, including chargeback exposure, flow-of-funds structures, high-risk sector activity, and transaction-velocity patterns.
*Perform advanced onboarding risk assessments, providing expert recommendations on merchant approval, decline, or enhanced control measures.
*Manage and quality-review high-volume transaction-monitoring queues, analysing 100+ alerts daily across multiple payment channels (card, bank transfers, open banking).
*Investigate complex transactional behaviour, such as layering, structuring, rapid throughput, or third-party payment activity, preventing fraud and money-laundering misuse.
*Conduct sanctions, PEP, and adverse-media screening on merchants, UBOs, and key controllers, ensuring accurate risk classification for multi-jurisdiction payment flows.
*Draft precise RFIs tailored to payment-sector risk, including clarifying processing volumes, payment flows, business model legitimacy, and operational processes.
*Prepare clear, well-rationalised SARs relating to payment fraud, mule-account activity, high-risk sectors, unusual volume spikes, and suspected ML patterns.
*Collaborate with the MLRO, Product, and Risk teams to enhance payment-specific controls such as velocity rulesets, KYB workflows, and merchant-monitoring triggers.
*Act as an escalation point for complex merchant and transaction-based investigations, supporting junior analysts and operational teams.
Profile
*Deep expertise in KYC, KYB, and EDD for payment merchants, including assessing higher-risk sectors, flow-of-funds structures, and transaction-velocity patterns.
*Hands-on experience with transaction-monitoring tools, sanctions/PEP screening systems, and rule-based monitoring specific to card payments, bank transfers, and fintech payment rails.
*Ability to draft clear, concise RFIs and SARs, demonstrating strong written communication and the ability to articulate risk clearly to internal stakeholders and regulators.
*Previous experience within a payments, crypto, or neo-banking environment, with a strong understanding of industry-specific risks, operating models, and regulatory expectations.
Job Offer
*Competitive daily rate between GBP 225 to GBP 250.
*Opportunity to work within the innovative payments and neo-banking industry in London.
*Temp to Perm position offering valuable experience in financial crime and compliance.