Branden Beardsley
Branden Beardsley
Payments Performance Manager, Adyen
Chicago, IL
MS Data Science · 4.0 GPA
Pursuing Product Manager roles in Payments

Hi, I'm Branden.

Almost 8 years in payments. Currently at Adyen, where I consult enterprise merchants on authorization optimization, ML fraud prevention, smart authentication routing, and payment cost reduction. Before that: built a risk engine from scratch at Paze, pitched fraud tools at PayPal/Braintree, and scaled a fraud team at Chime.

I've never held the title of Product Manager — but I've been doing PM work my entire career: scoping problems, writing specs, shipping systems, and measuring outcomes. I spend my weekends building Cellix.ai because I can't stop thinking about these problems. I'm ready to make the leap into product.

See my journey ↓ My weekend project → Resume
What I bring

Almost 8 years of doing PM work
without the PM title.

I've spent my career at the intersection of payments, risk, and technology — scoping problems, writing specs, shipping products, and measuring impact. Here's how my experience maps to what Product Managers do every day.

Authorization optimization & payment routing

Full-funnel payment performance consulting

I advise 50+ enterprise merchants at Adyen on authorization rate optimization — designing A/B tests against competing processors, configuring intelligent payment routing, and translating basis-point auth improvements into dollar-denominated merchant revenue. I own the problem end-to-end: diagnosing root causes, recommending product configurations, and measuring outcomes across the full payment funnel.

ML fraud prevention & risk architecture

Building and configuring fraud systems from zero

I help merchants configure ML fraud scoring engines — setting risk thresholds, customizing action-based rules, backtesting rule performance, and tuning the balance between false positives and fraud catch rate. At Paze, I built an entire risk engine from scratch: 90+ signal-layered rules, vendor selection, API integration specs, and precision/recall tuning. This is product ownership in everything but title.

Technical depth + commercial impact

Bridging engineering and merchant outcomes

A PM's job is to translate technical capabilities into business value. That's what I do daily — connecting a 0.3% lift in authorization rates to a $2M annual impact for an enterprise merchant, writing the specs that engineering teams build from, and making the case to sales teams in language they can use. I understand the systems deeply enough to challenge assumptions and make trade-offs.

Smart authentication & compliance

Authentication routing, exemptions, and SCA strategy

I work with merchants on authentication optimization — smart 3DS routing that applies authentication where required while leveraging exemptions where permitted. The ML models select the optimal auth route per transaction, balancing compliance with conversion. Understanding the regulatory landscape across markets is critical PM context.

0→1 product ownership at Paze

Built a risk engine from scratch for a digital wallet

Paze launched as a digital wallet with zero fraud infrastructure. I owned the entire buildout: evaluated vendors, wrote technical specs, defined API integration requirements, authored 90+ fraud rules, and ran tuning cycles against board-mandated auth rate targets. Shipped a complete risk engine to production in under 12 months — the kind of 0→1 work that teaches you how products actually get built.

Builder mindset

I built Cellix.ai because I can't stop thinking about this

An AI-powered dispute automation platform across 27+ processor integrations — built on nights and weekends. Not to launch a startup. Because after years of watching merchants lose disputes they should win, I wanted to see if I could build something better. From the 14-page technical spec to the ML scoring engine, every decision was a product decision.

Career

Almost 8 years. Four companies.
One domain I can't get enough of.

Each role brought me deeper into payments — from operations to strategy to optimization. Here's the thread that connects them.

Adyen Feb 2025 – Present Payments Performance Manager

Consulting enterprise merchants on full-funnel payment optimization

Advising 50+ enterprise merchants on the full Uplift suite — Protect (ML fraud scoring), Authenticate (smart 3DS routing), and Optimize (auth rate optimization). I design A/B tests against competing processors, configure intelligent payment routing, and translate basis-point improvements into merchant revenue. Generated $15M+ in ARR through Protect portfolio expansion. Every day, I'm doing the work of a PM — scoping problems, recommending configurations, measuring impact, and presenting outcomes to stakeholders.

$15M+ ARR 50+ merchants advised Current role
Paze (Early Warning) Feb 2024 – Feb 2025 Sr. Fraud Risk Strategist

Built a risk engine from scratch for a digital wallet

Paze launched competing with Apple Pay and PayPal with zero fraud infrastructure. I owned the entire risk engine architecture: evaluated and onboarded signal vendors, wrote technical specs, defined API integration requirements with engineering, authored 90+ signal-layered fraud rules, and ran precision/recall tuning against board-mandated auth rate targets. Reported directly to the board weekly. This was 0→1 product ownership — the kind of build that teaches you how products actually get shipped.

90+ fraud rules shipped 3–5pp auth rate lift 0→1 from scratch
PayPal Oct 2021 – Feb 2024 Enterprise Risk Strategist

Pitched fraud tools and managed card program risk at scale

Pitched fraud tools and risk solutions to enterprise merchants at Braintree/PayPal — covering dispute analytics, fraud recommendations, and compliance dashboards across 500+ accounts. Managed card program risk with Visa and Mastercard, preventing $2M+ in annual fines. Designed the merchant-facing product bundle that drove $500K+ in new ARR. This is where I learned how payment risk works at the enterprise level.

$2M+ fines prevented $500K+ new ARR 500+ merchants
Chime 2019 – 2021 Fraud Operations & Strategy

Scaled a fraud team from pilot to 150+ people

Built and directly managed a team of 10, while scaling the broader fraud ops site from a small pilot to 150+ investigators. Defined case routing logic, SLA frameworks, and accuracy thresholds. Built dispute forecasting models that predicted volume 30 days out and cleared 30% of backlog. This is where I learned how fraud operations actually work — before the ML layer.

Managed team of 10 150+ investigators scaled 95%+ case accuracy
The weekend project

I built this for fun.
That's kind of the point.

Cellix.ai is an AI-powered dispute automation and payment intelligence platform. I built it on nights and weekends because the problem was too interesting not to. It's live in production with 27+ processor integrations.

Why I built it

After years of managing disputes manually across PayPal, seeing merchants struggle with card network compliance, and building fraud systems from scratch at Paze — I kept thinking: this should be automated, and nobody's doing it well. So I started building.

Cellix automates dispute investigations end-to-end — compiling evidence to Visa CE3.0 and Mastercard specs, submitting via processor APIs, and running fraud prevention across the stack. It solves a real industry pain point, and building it taught me more about product thinking than any job could.

What it does

  • Automates dispute evidence compilation to card network specifications
  • Integrates with 27+ processors — including Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, Checkout.com, Braintree
  • 50ms dispute decision latency
  • Full lifecycle dispute automation from intake to submission
  • ML-powered fraud signal analysis and prevention
The full Cellix story → www.cellix.ai ↗
Why Product Management

I've been doing PM work.
Now I want the title.

I already think like a PM

Every role I've held has required product thinking — diagnosing merchant pain points, writing technical specs for engineering teams, designing A/B tests, measuring outcomes, and iterating. At Paze, I owned a 0→1 buildout end-to-end. At Adyen, I consult on the same product decisions PMs make internally. The work is the same — the title hasn't caught up yet.

Deep domain expertise in payments

I've worked across fraud operations at Chime, enterprise risk at PayPal/Braintree, risk engine architecture at Paze, and full-funnel payment optimization at Adyen. That breadth means I understand how authorization, fraud, disputes, and compliance interact — not just one slice. Payments PMs need to understand the full system, and I do.

Technical depth + analytical foundation

I have a Master's in Data Science (4.0 GPA), hands-on experience building ML scoring engines, and the analytical skills to work alongside data science and engineering teams as a peer — not just a translator. I can query data, interpret model outputs, challenge statistical assumptions, and write specs that engineers can build from directly.

I build things — proof is in Cellix.ai

Talk is cheap. I built a production payment intelligence platform on nights and weekends — 27+ integrations, ML scoring, dispute automation, real-time monitoring. Every decision was a product decision: what to build, what to skip, how to scope, when to ship. Cellix.ai is the strongest evidence that I think and operate like a PM.

Most PMs come from engineering, consulting, or business school. I'm coming from almost 8 years on the front lines of the exact domain I want to build products in — with a weekend project that proves I can ship.

I'm ready to bring my domain expertise, builder mindset, and analytical skills to a PM role where I can have even greater impact.