Head of Digital Payments

Summary

Strategy & Leadership

• Develop and execute the overall Digital Payments strategy aligned with Finance House's corporate objectives and digital transformation agenda.
• Define and maintain a multi-year digital payments roadmap, prioritizing initiatives based on business value, customer demand, market opportunities, and regulatory requirements.
• Lead the Digital Payments function, ensuring successful delivery of innovative payment solutions from concept through implementation and commercialization.
• Act as the organization's subject matter expert on emerging payment technologies, fintech innovations, digital wallets, embedded finance, open banking, AI driven payment solutions, and evolving payment ecosystems.

Product Development & Innovation

• Drive the end-to-end lifecycle management of digital payment products, including cards, acquiring solutions, prepaid programs, wallets, and future payment innovations.
• Identify market opportunities, customer pain points, and emerging trends to create differentiated payment solutions.
• Establish and manage a robust pipeline of product enhancements, optimizations, and new product launches.
• Lead solution design, implementation, and commercialization of card issuing and acquiring initiatives, including greenfield prepaid card programs.
• Leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced analytics, and customer insights to improve product performance, customer engagement, fraud prevention, and revenue generation.

Business & Stakeholder Management

• Partner closely with the CIO, Head of Consumer Financial Services, Digital World team, and other senior stakeholders to ensure alignment of digital payments initiatives with organizational priorities.
• Act as the primary liaison between business, technology, operations, compliance, risk, and external partners for all digital payment projects.
• Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to define business requirements, use cases, and customer journeys.
• Build and maintain strategic relationships with payment networks, fintech partners, processors, vendors, and regulators.

Market Intelligence & Customer Experience

• Continuously monitor global and regional payment industry developments, regulatory changes, and competitive trends.
• Evaluate new technologies and business models to ensure early adoption of innovative payment solutions.
• Champion customer centric product design by incorporating customer behavior, feedback, and data driven insights into product development.
• Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs), including customer acquisition, transaction growth, revenue generation, product adoption, customer satisfaction, and ROI.

Project Delivery & Governance

• Lead cross functional project teams, including onshore, offshore, and third-party vendor resources.
• Ensure successful execution of digital payment initiatives within agreed timelines, budgets, and quality standards.
• Drive Agile delivery methodologies, continuous improvement, and accelerated time-to-market for digital products.
• Ensure compliance with applicable regulatory, risk management, cybersecurity, and governance requirements.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, Finance, Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related discipline.
• Master's Degree or relevant professional certifications in Payments, Product Management, Digital Transformation, FinTech, or Banking will be an advantage.

Experience & Requirements

• Minimum 12 years of progressive experience within digital payments, cards, acquiring, issuing, retail banking, or fintech environments.
• Proven experience leading large scale digital payment product portfolios and transformation programs.
• Strong knowledge of card issuing, merchant acquiring, prepaid cards, digital wallets, payment gateways, and payment processing ecosystems.
• Demonstrated success in leveraging data, analytics, AI, and customer insights to improve product performance and customer engagement.
• Experience developing product strategies, business cases, and multi year roadmaps.
• Strong understanding of payment regulations, industry standards, and risk management frameworks.
• Proven ability to manage complex stakeholder environments and lead cross-functional teams.
• Experience working with Agile product development methodologies and digital delivery frameworks.
• Excellent leadership, communication, negotiation, and strategic thinking skills.
• Strong commercial acumen with a focus on innovation, growth, profitability, and customer experience.