Senior Business Development Manager, Italy

About Us
Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you'll have the opportunity to create impact at scale — tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives around the world.

Join Visa and do work that matters – to you, to your community, and to the world. Progress starts with you.

Job Description

We are seeking an experienced, dynamic, results-driven Business Development Manager with deep interest in the fintech ecosystem and a strong commitment to accelerating Visa’s growth across Italy.

The ideal candidate is a proactive new-business “hunter” with a passion for payments innovation, strong relationship-building capabilities, and understanding of Visa’s solutions. They will confidently articulate compelling value propositions tailored to emerging, disruptive, and non-traditional use cases, and will own opportunities end-to-end—from lead identification and prioritisation through qualification, commercial structuring, and close. This individual is a resilient self-starter who excels in fast-paced environments, manages multiple priorities, and consistently delivers against ambitious sales targets.

Responsibilities:

• Proactively prospect and identify early-stage opportunities across the fintech and landscape, building and maintaining a qualified pipeline of net-new leads.
• Work against sales targets, taking corrective action to ensure target aattainment.
• Qualify and prioritise leads based on strategic fit, readiness, and revenue potential, focusing time on the highest-value opportunities.
• Lead initial client engagement and discovery to assess needs, articulate Visa’s capabilities, and progress opportunities through the funnel to a clear close plan.
• Collaborate with Digital Sales and cross-functional partners to accelerate outreach, qualification, and deal progression
• Partner with tech enablers to shape and land new use cases, expand capabilities, and open new fintech verticals, owning the commercial path to close.
• Build commercial frameworks to accelerate deal progression in alignment with company governance; lead contract negotiation and drive opportunities to signed agreement.
• Maintain strong pipeline discipline (CRM hygiene, next steps, close plans, and forecasting) to ensure consistent conversion from lead to close.
• Support or lead the successful execution of the Visa Innovation Program Italy.

Visa requires at least 3 days per week in office.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in business development / new business sales (hunter role), ideally within payments, fintech, or technology partnerships.
• Fintech experience is a strong plus.
• Should be native in Italian, fluent in written and spoken English
• Excellent AI, presentation and communication skills alongside proficiency in Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint, etc.).
• Strong project management capabilities with the ability to manage tight deadlines and multiple concurrent initiatives.
• Strong lead qualification and prioritisation skills, with the ability to manage a high-velocity pipeline and focus effort where it drives the most impact.

Visa is an EEO Employer

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.