Head of Compliance/MLRO

About The Client
Our client is a UK-licensed acquiring institution and a principal member of Visa and Mastercard. The company operates as a fast-growing payments scale-up, providing card acquiring services to merchants across various risk tiers. As the business expands, the organisation is strengthening its compliance and AML framework in preparation for larger regulatory oversight and increased operational scale.

Role Overview
We are looking for a highly professional
Head of Compliance / MLRO,
who will take ownership of the full AML/CTF and regulatory compliance function. The role is designed for a hands-on professional who can ensure flawless onboarding, robust oversight of merchant activity, clean regulatory reporting, and compliance with all FCA and card-scheme requirements.

Key Responsibilities
The Head of Compliance will be accountable for all core elements of the AML/CTF framework, merchant oversight, and regulatory alignment, including:

• Managing end-to-end AML/KYC/KYB onboarding for mid-risk and high-risk merchants.
• Conducting and reviewing CDD/EDD, ownership structures, UBO analysis, sanctions and PEP results.
• Ensuring the onboarding journey remains compliant with Visa/Mastercard scheme standards.
• Acting as the primary approver (maker role) for compliance-related onboarding decisions.
• Overseeing ongoing monitoring, including sanctions alerts, adverse media findings, suspicious behaviour indicators, and periodic merchant reviews aligned with risk tiers.
• SARs/STRs reporting
• Maintaining AML, CDD, EDD, onboarding and monitoring policies, ensuring they remain up to date.
• Preparing regulatory, internal, and scheme-related compliance reports.
• Ensuring full regulatory compliance to UK/EU AML rules and card-scheme requirements.
• Monitoring merchant activity for fraud signals, unusual transactional patterns, or scheme-related policy breaches.
• Collaborating with Risk and Underwriting team on appetite thresholds, merchant categorization and escalations.
• Providing compliance guidance to operational, underwriting, and commercial teams.
• Delivering ongoing AML/CTF training programmes to internal staff.
• Preparing documentation and evidence for external and internal audits.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in AML/Compliance within payments, acquiring or fintech.
• Strong understanding of UK and EU AML legislation, Visa/Mastercard scheme rules and requirements.
• Hands-on experience with sanctions/PEP screening, UBO verification and enhanced due diligence.
• Ability to assess merchant business models and identify behavioural red flags.
• Excellent command of English; Russian language proficiency strongly preferred.
• High personal integrity, strong ethical standards and independent judgment.
• Strong communication skills, able to collaborate with technical and non-technical teams and stakeholders.
• Problem-solving mindset and readiness to improve or rebuild processes with low initial maturity.

Nice to Have:

• ACAMS / ICA / IMC or similar certifications.
• Previous experience with high-risk merchant payment processing
• Understanding of fraud and chargeback flows.
• Knowledge of GDPR and data-protection principles.

What We Offer:

• A key leadership role in a scaling UK-regulated acquirer with significant strategic impact.
• Close collaboration with senior leadership and ownership of the entire Compliance/AML function.
• Competitive compensation package and long-term growth opportunities.
• A dynamic environment with the ability to shape processes and frameworks from the ground up.

If you're looking to take full ownership of AML/Compliance in a high-growth payments environment, we'd be glad to hear from you.