Risk & Underwriting Analyst - VPAY

Aspire Software is looking for a Risk & Underwriting Analyst to join our team in Lebanon.

Here is a little window into our company: Aspire Software operates and manages wholly owned software companies, providing mission-critical solutions across multiple verticals. By implementing industry best practices, Aspire delivers a time sensitive integration process, and the operation of a decentralized model has allowed it to become a hub for creating rapid growth by reinvesting in its portfolio.

Role Overview

We are looking for a Risk & Underwriting Analyst to sit inside our Risk & Underwriting team and take real ownership of the work that keeps merchants out of trouble. You will own the chargeback function end to end. That is the anchor of the job — but it is not the whole job, and we are not hiring a chargeback analyst who might one day help with other things. Underwriting is the second half of this role, not a stretch goal: you will work the underwriting and boarding pipeline with the Lead from day one, and we expect you to be carrying real weight on it. Alongside both, you will keep eyes on risk and transaction monitoring, and you will be the person who notices when a pattern stops looking normal. Around all of that, you will spend a good part of your week talking to people: Support, Operations, Finance, Partnerships, Product — and, just as often, merchants and partners directly.

This is a role with a lot of surface area and very little sitting still. Priorities move, deadlines belong to the card networks rather than to us, and the interesting problems rarely arrive labelled. If that sounds like your kind of day, keep reading.

What you'll own
Chargebacks & disputes — your function

• Own the chargeback lifecycle end to end: intake from the networks, merchant notification, evidence gathering, representment, pre-arbitration and arbitration decisions.
• Build and defend the case. Assemble compelling evidence, write representments that actually win, and know when a dispute is worth fighting versus when accepting it is the commercially smarter call.
• Manage the chargebacks inbox and dispute queues to SLA — network deadlines are not negotiable and neither are ours.
• Coach merchants and partners: explain reason codes in plain language, tell them what evidence you need and why, and help the repeat offenders fix the root cause rather than re-fighting the same dispute every month.
• Track and report the numbers that matter — chargeback ratios, win rates, ageing, loss exposure, top reason codes, worst-performing MIDs — and flag accounts drifting toward network monitoring programmes before they get there.
• Improve the machinery. Templates, macros, portal workflows, evidence checklists, automation, knowledge- base articles: leave the function better organised than you found it.
  

Underwriting & merchant boarding — the other half of the job

• Work the underwriting cycle with the Lead and carry your own share of the file: application review, KYC/KYB and document verification, business model and website review, sanctions and adverse media checks.
• Assess risk on new and existing merchants — industry, ownership, processing history, delivery model, refund and chargeback exposure — and put forward a reasoned recommendation on approval, limits, reserves and conditions. Your view is expected to be part of the decision, not a summary of somebody else’s.
• Own the boarding pipeline day to day: keep applications moving, chase missing documents, unblock stuck files, resolve boarding errors, and keep merchants and partners informed the whole way through.
• Run periodic reviews, re-underwriting and account changes as merchants grow, pivot, or start selling something they were never approved for.
• Grow into the deeper end of it. As you build the reps, take on more of the underwriting book independently — this role is meant to widen, not stay still.

Risk & transaction monitoring

• Monitor transaction activity and alert queues for fraud, laundering, collusion, card testing, velocity spikes, and merchants processing outside what they were approved for.
• Investigate and resolve alerts with a clear written rationale, and escalate the ones that deserve escalation quickly and unambiguously.
• Recommend and action risk decisions: holds, reserves, payout blocks, limit changes, offboarding — and
  communicate them to the merchant with a straight face and a clear explanation.
• Feed what you learn back into the rules. If a pattern beat us once, help make sure it does not beat us twice.

Compliance & the rulebook — a bonus if you bring it

• Work within card scheme rules (Visa, Mastercard, Amex) and network dispute and monitoring programmes.
  If you already know this rulebook, you will use it here; if you do not, you will learn it on the job.
• Support PCI DSS compliance across our merchant base — SAQ progress, validation status, non-compliance
  follow-up — and help merchants get through it without losing them in the jargon.
• Keep records that hold up: clean audit trails, documented decisions, and evidence that stands on its own six
  months later.

Working across the business

• Be the reliable risk counterpart for Support, Operations, Finance, Partnerships and Product — the person other teams are glad to see in the thread.
• Handle external conversations with merchants, partners, and processing and acquiring counterparts with
  equal comfort — including the conversations nobody enjoys having.
• Turn what you learn into something reusable: internal SOPs, merchant-facing guides, training for frontline
  teams.

A risk operator. Somebody who has done this work, not only read about it, and who is comfortable being the owner of an answer rather than the router of a question. We would take a candidate who understands the function cold and adapts fast over one who knows every tool on this page but is slow to move.

• 3+ years of hands-on experience in payments risk, disputes, fraud, or merchant underwriting — at a PSP, acquirer, processor, fintech, or a merchant with real card volume.
• Direct, working chargeback knowledge. You have handled disputes yourself, know your way around reason codes, representment evidence and network timelines, and can explain a pre-arb without looking it up. This one is the non-negotiable.
• A real appetite for underwriting. Exposure to underwriting, KYB/KYC or merchant boarding — enough to know what a file looks like and what makes one risky. We will build on whatever base you have, but you need to want this half of the job, not tolerate it.
• A feel for monitoring. You have looked at transaction activity or alert queues before and can tell a busy day from a bad one.
• Sound risk judgement. You can weigh commercial reality against exposure, make a call with incomplete information, and write down why you made it.
• Quick on your feet. You re-prioritise without drama, pick up unfamiliar tools and rules quickly, and stay accurate when several things land at once.
• Genuinely good with people. Clear written English, a calm and direct manner with merchants and partners, and the instinct to pick up the phone when a thread is going nowhere.
• French. A good part of our merchant and partner base works in French — being able to handle those conversations properly matters to us.
• Comfortable with data. Confident in spreadsheets and dashboards; able to pull a number, sanity-check it, and notice when it looks wrong.
• Ownership by default. You close loops, you follow up, and you tell people where things stand before they have to ask.
  

Nice to have — genuinely optional, and happily taught

• Working knowledge of card scheme regulations and network monitoring programmes (VDMP/VFMP, Mastercard ECM/EFM and their successors).
• PCI DSS and SAQ familiarity, or experience running a merchant compliance programme.
• Wider regulatory or AML/CTF exposure in a payments context.
• Experience with a major processor or acquirer platform, dispute managers, or fraud and monitoring tooling.
• SQL or similar for pulling your own data.
  
• Why this role is worth your time
• A function you actually own, with your name on it, from week one — and a second discipline to grow into right beside it.
• A direct line to the Risk & Underwriting Lead — real mentorship on underwriting, not a dotted line on an org chart.
• Breadth most risk roles do not offer: disputes, underwriting, monitoring and compliance in the same job, at a company small enough that you see all of it.
• Visible work. Risk decisions here reach merchants, partners and the leadership team, quickly.
• Room to grow into the deeper end of underwriting, risk strategy or compliance as the team scales.