Description
Block's Financial Operations team is responsible for the movement of money through bank partners, card networks, payment partners, and internal platforms. The team's mission is to ensure customers' experience taking payments, completing sales, settling funds, and getting paid is reliable, efficient, compliant, and cost-effective.
As Head of Financial Operations, Japan, you will lead Square's financial operations strategy in the market. You will own critical payment and banking partner relationships, strengthen operational resilience and controls, and ensure Square can scale reliably in Japan.
Responsibilities:
- Lead the execution of Square Japan's Financial Operations priorities, turning regional and global strategy into clear market plans and outcomes.
- Own operational performance for incoming and outgoing payments, including reliability, settlement, incident management, controls, cost efficiency, and seller experience.
- Build and manage senior relationships with banks, acquirers, card networks, payment providers, industry bodies, regulators, and other strategic partners.
- Lead commercial and operational negotiations with payment and banking partners to support Square's growth, product roadmap, risk requirements, and cost objectives.
- Represent Square Japan in partner, industry, regulatory, and public forums where Financial Operations expertise is required.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Risk, Compliance, Legal, Policy, Finance, Marketing, and Operations to launch new capabilities and resolve market-specific challenges.
- Identify opportunities to improve authorization performance, settlement reliability, reconciliation, payment costs, dispute outcomes, vendor performance, and operational controls.
- Monitor regulatory, network, partner, and industry changes in Japan and lead coordinated responses across internal teams.
- Establish governance, reporting, operating rhythms, and escalation paths that improve decision-making, transparency, and accountability.
Requirements:
- 15+ years of experience in fintech, payments, banking, card networks, acquiring, issuing, payment operations, or related financial services roles.
- Deep expertise in Japan's payments ecosystem, including card networks, acquirers, issuers, processors, banks, regulators, government bodies, and industry associations.
- A strong track record building and influencing senior relationships with partners, financial institutions, regulators, industry bodies, and market stakeholders.
- Strong commercial judgment, including experience negotiating complex agreements and balancing cost, risk, compliance, customer experience, product outcomes, and growth.
- Experience representing a company externally with senior partners, regulators, government stakeholders, industry bodies, or public-facing audiences.
- Proven ability to lead through ambiguity, translate complexity into clear plans, and deliver measurable outcomes across business, product, operational, regulatory, and technical challenges.
- Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives with Product, Engineering, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Risk, Policy, Marketing, and Operations teams.
- Executive-level communication and presentation skills in English, with the ability to make clear and persuasive recommendations to senior stakeholders.
- Native or business-level Japanese proficiency, including the ability to negotiate, influence, and build trust with Japan-based partners and regulators.