English archaeologist noted for the publication Necrocorinthia (1931), in which a vast body of important information on archaic vase painting and other arts practiced at Corinth was gathered and classified.

Payne was educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he studied classics and took two first-class honours. He continued his education by working as a research scholar in Mediterranean archaeology (1924–26). He became a senior scholar at Christ Church (1926–31) and worked as an assistant at the Ashmolean Museum from 1926 to 1928.

Appointed director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens in 1929, Payne published Necrocorinthia and Archaic Marble Sculpture from the Acropolis (1936; with photographs by Gerard Mackworth Young). Another excellent work, Perachora, on the archaic site located near Corinth, was written chiefly by Payne, but it was published after his death. He was buried in Mycenae.