There are two viable high yield[1] career plays in payments (other than completely staying away from this highly commoditized and increasingly red-ocean market):
- Work for a short term lending company. Successful companies are popping up and new underwriting models using social, new data sources, and other feedback loops are the future. From Klarna to LendingClub to other smaller ones, if you’re extending some kind of credit or facilitating that, you’re learning something very valuable for the next 5-10 years.
- Be a modeler/good risk person for payments. Good risk people are worth their weight in gold and possibly more expensive metals. Extra points if you understand the data science aspect as well as the operations side. I cannot begin to explain how big the need is – supply is at least 2 years behind the demand (in the sense that it takes time to grow people into being strong domain experts) and it’s going to remain that way for at least a few more years. For this path I’d try to get hired into companies like Signifyd.
[1] High yield means not working for the man for a low 6 digit income for the rest of your life. If you want that, there are many other options.