Card Fraud & Chargeback Risk Strategist (Issuing Risk)

About the Role: We are seeking a Card Fraud & Chargeback Risk Strategist to own the risk performance of bank card issuing program. You will be accountable for keeping the portfolio inside Mastercard's fraud and chargeback program thresholds, designing pre-authorization screening and authentication strategy, and running the dispute/representment lifecycle end to end. You will work with the BIN sponsor, card scheme, and internal product, compliance, and data science teams.

What You’ll Do:

• Own portfolio-level fraud rate, chargeback rate and chargeback ratio against Mastercard program thresholds; build the monitoring, alerting and early-warning layer that flags drift before it becomes a scheme program breach
• Design and tune real-time pre-authorization screening strategy — rule sets and risk scores combining acquiring-side data, 3DS outcome and issuing-side signals; own approve/decline/challenge trade-offs and the resulting false-decline cost
• Own the authentication strategy: EMV 3DS usage and exemption logic, MFA at application, step-up verification (liveness, GPS-verification, face verification) for suspicious card activity, and card freeze/unfreeze controls
• Run the chargeback lifecycle: reason-code level analysis, representment evidence design, win-rate improvement, first-chargeback and fraud-report reconciliation, and root-cause feedback into rules and product design
• Build merchant and MCC-level controls: velocity limits per MCC, targeted controls for repeatedly attacked merchants (e.g. app-store and digital-goods merchants), temporary merchant whitelisting via verified MFA
• Partner with the BIN sponsor and Mastercard on scheme rule changes, program reviews and audits; translate new scheme requirements into concrete strategy and process changes
• Quantify risk impact and control cost for prioritization and management reporting; define the KPI set jointly with the card business unit

What We’re Looking For:

• Hands-on card issuing or card acquiring fraud experience at a bank, card issuer, PSP, payment processor or BIN sponsor — you have personally owned fraud rate and chargeback rate as numbers, not as projects
• Working knowledge of Mastercard rules and dispute mechanics: chargeback reason codes, the dispute/representment lifecycle and timelines, fraud reporting flows, and the scheme monitoring programs that constrain an issuer
• Strong data analysis skills: SQL required, Python preferred; able to independently build and validate detection logic on transaction-level and chargeback-level datasets
• Ability to reason from the attacker's perspective: how card fraud rings source cards and accounts, how they test and cash out, and where a debit-style product tied to an exchange balance is uniquely exposed
• Experience collaborating across risk, product, compliance and external partners (scheme, BIN sponsor, processors)