The Role
Who are we?
At OpenPayd, we are building a universal financial infrastructure to power the growth of the digital economy. Our rails-agnostic approach empowers any business to move and manage money globally - across both traditional rails and stablecoins — at scale, and in real time.
The OpenPayd platform delivers a suite of banking and payments infrastructure: accounts in over 40 currencies, FX, on/off ramp, international and domestic payments, Open Banking services – all via a single API.
A global network of licences alongside our best-in-class tech is why we're trusted by 800+ enterprise clients to process over €130 billion annually.
The Senior Commercial Counsel will act as a trusted legal advisor and strategic partner across OpenPayd’s global operations. This role is responsible for leading complex commercial negotiations, shaping legal strategy, and ensuring that client, supplier, and partner engagements are aligned with regulatory requirements across the UK, EU, and other international markets.
The Senior Commercial Counsel will proactively identify and mitigate legal risk, enable scalable and compliant business growth, and contribute to the continued maturity of OpenPayd’s legal function.
How will you add value to the OpenPayd Journey:
- Lead negotiation and delivery of high-value, high-complexity client contracts.
- Oversee supplier onboarding strategy, including negotiation of key supplier and banking partner agreements, ensuring compliance with DORA, EBA and other applicable regulatory frameworks.
- Act as an escalation and decision point for complex legal queries across the business.
- Ensure consistent application of legal standards and processes across all jurisdictions.
- Develop and deliver internal training, guidance, and strategic insights on legal, regulatory and commercial matters, including international expansion.
- Provide expert commercial legal guidance across all functional areas of the business.
- Lead high-risk or strategically significant commercial contract negotiations.
- Advise senior stakeholders across Sales, Customer Success, Compliance, Operations, Finance, Risk, InfoSec and Technology.
- Manage a small team of commercial lawyers and/or paralegals, and provide leadership and mentoring within the wider Legal team.
- Own and oversee periodic updates of client terms.
- Manage the trademarks portfolio.
- Drive improvements to legal processes, templates, and operational frameworks.
- Support regulatory-related matters with Compliance and Risk.
- Lead legal workstream for international expansion projects.
- Monitor legal, regulatory and market developments globally.
- Build strong cross-functional relationships to support strategic decision-making.
The ideal candidate will have the following:
- Qualified lawyer (common law or civil law jurisdictions considered); typically 7+ years PQE.
- Experience in regulated financial services, payments, or e-money.
- Strong background in commercial contracting and leading complex negotiations.
- Ability to operate autonomously and influence senior stakeholders.
- Excellent knowledge of payments, e-money, and understanding of digital assets.
- Strong written and spoken English with ability to communicate to non-legal stakeholders.
- Experience developing legal processes, playbooks, or governance structures is a plus.
- Confident, proactive and able to manage a demanding workload.
- Comfortable making decisions in ambiguous, fast-moving environments.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
- Flexible, collaborative and open-minded, with a strong sense of ownership for both legal team and company outcomes
Our Perks and Benefits
- Personal training budget - £3000
- Cycle to Work scheme
- Discounted gym membership - £80 towards any gym
- Corporate discounts via Perk Box
- Travel loan
- Company Pension plan, 5.75% from the employer
- Health, Life, Dental Insurance
- Friday office breakfasts, office fruits and a full bar & regular team social
- 25 days annual leave plus the Bank Holidays, extra day off for Birthday & Social Volunteering
- Early Friday Finish 4pm
- Discretionary Annual Bonus Scheme
We’d like you to take a read of our Talent Acquisition Privacy Notice which explains how we collect and process your personal data. Please read our notice carefully. By submitting the application button, we will consider that you aware of it.
We are looking forward to receiving your CV.
OpenPayd Talent Team
To all recruitment agencies: OpenPayd does not accept speculative agency resumes. Please do not forward resumes to our jobs alias, OpenPayd employees or any other company location. OpenPayd is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes. OpenPayd will only accept CV's from the partners with relevant agreement via the People and Talent team only.
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The Company
What We Do
Embedded Finance for the digital economy OpenPayd is a leading global payments and banking-as-a-service platform that provides a range of banking and payment services to both financial and non-financial institutions. Our services are underpinned by a global network of licences and are accessible through a single API. These include IBANs, open banking, e-money accounts, FX conversion, local and international payments, card processing and debit cards. We believe that all businesses - irrespective of their size or industry - should be able to access the best payment and banking services. We provide all of our services through a simple, flexible and scalable platform.
