Payments Management Challenge Payments Management Challenge

Our popular Payments Management Challenge is back. Form a team (up to four people from your organization) and play to win as you grow your portfolio management skills in a competition against teams from around the world.

Program registration is now closed
Join us for our next challenge in 2025

Register your team early to secure your spot in the competition. 

Only one registration is needed per team (view registration instructions). Please register under your team captain's name — do not add additional attendees at time of registration unless you are registering multiple teams. Your team captain will receive a separate communication with details on how to add team members after your team's registration is confirmed.

Special offers: Save 15 percent when you register more than six weeks in advance with promo code Save15 or register four teams from your organization and receive an additional team registration at no additional cost. Offers cannot be combined.

Payments Management Challenge is an eight-week (approximately four hours per week) global competition to see which team can build the most successful payments portfolio over a five-year period in a simulated marketplace.

Together with your team, you’ll spend around four hours a week reviewing market data, analyzing your team's results and entering decisions into the simulation. The simulation includes recent payments trends such as buy now, pay later (BNPL), tokenization, transaction controls and payments in the metaverse.

Test your skills and discover best practices in a fun competition

Develop your team strategy

Consider your environment and leverage cross-functional knowledge as you create a go-to-market strategy.

Practice your skills

Build a successful credit, debit and merchant acquiring portfolio and grow market share while managing risk and controlling operating costs.

Compete to win

See how your team ranks on the leaderboard and adjust your strategy to increase your profitability.

Building your team

Payments Management Challenge is a fun competition that everyone in the payments industry can benefit from.

We recommend choosing  team members who bring a variety of skills and backgrounds to the group (e.g., analytical skills, marketing experience, strategic orientation). Areas within your organization to consider when building your team include: 

  • Product
  • Strategy
  • Operations
  • Risk
  • Fraud
  • Marketing

Only one registration is needed per team (view registration instructions). Please register under your team captain's name — do not add additional attendees at time of registration unless you are registering multiple teams. Your team captain will receive a separate communication with details on how to add team members after your team's registration is confirmed.

Playing to win

Throughout the challenge, we’ll update the leaderboard so you can see how your team ranks against the competition. 

If your team wins the competition, you will be awarded the Payments Management Challenge trophy for permanent display in your company office, plus an automatic entry into the next challenge.

The winning team will join the ranks of former winners from Hong Kong, India, Thailand, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.



PMC Winners

Creating a profitable payments portfolio

Gain hands-on portfolio management experience as you build, test and adapt your credit, debit and merchant acquiring strategies in a risk-free environment.

Adapting your strategy to the changing landscape

Take a “test and learn” approach as you adjust your strategy in response to a variety of internal and external factors, including:

  • Regulations
  • Customers
  • Risk management
  • Pricing
  • Market changes
  • Competitors

Expert guidance and insight

Throughout the program, you will also receive guidance and insight from payments industry expert James Cranfield. You’ll engage with James via on-demand webcasts, results updates and interactive community posts where you’ll be able to ask specific questions on your team’s performance.

Members of all teams that complete the challenge will receive a digital certificate that can be shared on social media or added to email signatures.

"The challenge allowed us to play globally with teams from different regions, which was amazing! The teamwork and competition were exciting, and getting the results was the highlight."
– Past Payments Management Challenge participant