Strategic Partnerships Development Manager, Acquiring Partnerships

About the role

This role sits within the partnerships organization and focuses on expanding and strengthening Google Pay India’s merchant acquiring ecosystem. The position is centered on building high-value partnerships, improving payment and settlement operations, and turning cross-functional collaboration into measurable business outcomes. The selected candidate will work closely with internal product, engineering, legal, marketing, and business teams, as well as external banking and payments partners, to support growth across payment flows and merchant onboarding.

Preferred working location

Applicants will have the option to indicate a preferred work location from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India or Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.

Minimum qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree, or an equivalent level of practical experience.
• At least 4 years of experience in business development, partnerships, management consulting, or investment banking.
• Hands-on experience handling agreements or partnership relationships.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in merchant acquiring, payment processing, and settlement operations.
• Strong understanding of India’s payments ecosystem, including UPI, payment aggregator/payment gateway models, and Reserve Bank of India compliance requirements.
• Prior partner management experience in payments with banks and fintech companies.
• Ability to coordinate dependencies across functions and convert technical engineering goals into business value.
• Demonstrated experience driving joint objectives and key results across business development, product, engineering, legal, and marketing teams.

Role overview

The global partnerships function identifies and develops new opportunities with Google’s partners. In this role, business insight, product understanding, and relationship-building skills are used to help external partners grow through Google’s offerings. The wider organization supports product teams with partnerships that enable user experiences and business growth across areas such as advertising, Search, Assistant, Maps, Travel, Shopping, and Payments.

Responsibilities

• Lead Google Pay India’s merchant acquiring platform and payment flows by finding, structuring, and scaling strategic partnerships.
• Act as the main point of contact for banks, the National Payments Corporation of India, and other external partners to improve merchant acquiring, payment processing, and settlement operations.
• Own partner negotiations and contract execution end to end to launch and support new forms of payment and related business initiatives.
• Coordinate across internal and external stakeholders on acquiring programs, reliability efforts, payment aggregator compliance, and other partner operations, including updates to standard operating procedures when needed.
• Ensure compliance changes are delivered across teams in response to new NPCI and RBI requirements, while proactively addressing issues in merchant onboarding, system reliability, migrations, and audits to safeguard core business performance.

Additional information

Google is an equal opportunity workplace and an affirmative action employer. Employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, or veteran status. The company also considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, where permitted by law. Accommodation support is available for applicants who need it because of a disability or special need.