Payments is one of the busiest corners of UK financial services, and digital wallets sit at the centre of that activity. As more people pay by phone, the roles behind those payments keep shifting. The work now blends product thinking, risk, compliance and engineering, so a single job title rarely captures what a team actually needs.
The skill level matters too. In the financial services sector, recruitment was generally for higher-level roles rather than entry-level ones, according to the GOV.UK Temporary Shortage List: Stage 2 report (2026), which found hiring focused on Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 6+ roles rather than RQF 3 to 5. In plain terms, employers are reaching for more experienced, specialist people.
Digital wallets pull together several disciplines that used to sit apart. You need people who understand payment rails and APIs, people who can read fraud and risk signals, and people who can keep a product compliant without slowing it down. That mix is why one job advert often describes work that spans two or three traditional roles.
It also explains the demand for experienced specialists. With hiring skewed towards higher-level RQF 6+ roles rather than RQF 3 to 5 roles the GOV.UK Temporary Shortage List: Stage 2 report (2026), payments teams are competing for a smaller pool of people who can prove they have done the work before. Titles vary widely between companies, so the same skill set can hide behind very different labels.
Start with the skills, not the title. Write down the three or four things a person must be able to do early in the role, then test for those directly. A payments specialist who has shipped a wallet feature may be listed as an engineer in one company and a product lead in another, so matching on capability widens your pool.
Speed is part of the strategy. When you are hiring for specialist, higher-level roles, a slow process loses good people to faster competitors. A tight brief and a clear decision point keep you moving.
We search a database of 15 million candidates to match people on skills, not just titles, so a payments specialist is surfaced whatever label their last role carried. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. If you are building a digital wallet or payments team, tell us what the person needs to deliver and we will start matching today.
