New Research Reveals the Payment Manager Role Is Evolving Faster Than the Market Realises
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A new industry report published by Corefy highlights how the Payment Manager role is rapidly evolving from an operational function into a strategic business role — with expert commentary from Coinspaid‘s Lead Payments Officer, Ekaterina Spiridonova.
The report, The State of the Payment Manager Role 2026, analysed 112 payment-related job descriptions across 19 industries and 15+ countries to identify how responsibilities, KPIs, and expectations around payment leadership are changing.
One of the report’s key conclusions is that modern Payment Managers are no longer judged solely on operational stability. Instead, companies increasingly expect them to improve payment performance, optimise conversion, support compliance, and work closely with Product and Engineering teams.
“When payments function as a strategic centre, money is treated as a tool to drive profitability, optimise revenue, and support business growth,” says Ekaterina Spiridonova, Lead Payments Officer at Coinspaid.
“In contrast, when payments are limited to supporting system operations, money is seen merely as a resource to be spent. In this model, payments don’t contribute strategically; they simply enable transactions.”
The research further explores how AI may reshape payment operations, particularly in areas like transaction monitoring, fraud detection, and operational workflows. However, human expertise will remain essential.
“Payments require not just operational efficiency, but expert judgment, risk assessment, and experience-based decision-making,” says Ekaterina Spiridonova. “These often rely on intuition and improvisation, which AI cannot fully replicate.”
The report concludes that payment leadership is becoming increasingly cross-functional, sitting at the intersection of operations, product, compliance, finance, and technology.
For companies operating in regulated, high-growth sectors like crypto and fintech, this transformation is especially significant — requiring payment teams that can balance infrastructure complexity, compliance pressures, and commercial performance simultaneously.
About Corefy
Corefy is the unified payment operating system built for payment experts who manage, optimise, and scale payment infrastructure. The platform provides a single point of control over routing, cascading, provider connections, approval rate optimisation, and cost management, with 600+ provider integrations.
