About the Role
This role is focused on finding, signing, and managing fintech partnerships that will help drive customer acquisition, expand product offerings, and increase revenue for the company. You will engage with fintechs and platforms that can embed the company's services, ensuring that each partnership is commercially viable and contributes positively to growth.
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Key Responsibilities
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Partnership Strategy and Pipeline
- Build the company's fintech partnership strategy in alignment with the commercial plan and product roadmap.
- Map the UAE and regional fintech landscape to identify key partners that can add the most value in terms of new customers, products, or revenue.
- Create and manage a pipeline of potential partnership opportunities, prioritizing them based on commercial value and strategic fit.
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Deal Structuring and Negotiation
- Lead negotiations from initial discussions to final agreements.
- Structure the commercial model for each partnership including revenue shares, referral fees, licensing and implementation fees, white-label, and wholesale pricing.
- Develop business cases for each deal in collaboration with Business Intelligence to show expected volumes, revenue, costs, and margins.
- Prepare term sheets, MoUs, and partnership agreements with Legal to ensure terms protect the company's revenue, data, and exclusivity rights.
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Due Diligence and Approvals
- Evaluate each partner's financial stability, technology, security, and regulatory compliance in partnership with Compliance, Risk, and IT teams.
- Support strategic opportunities, including licensing, joint ventures, or investments, and coordinate due diligence with external advisers.
- Facilitate partnership proposals through internal approvals, presenting to management and the board as necessary.
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Launch and Integration
- Collaborate with Product and IT teams to plan and manage the integration process from technical scoping to go-live.
- Coordinate the go-to-market strategy with each partner including target customers, joint offers, marketing initiatives, and sales enablement.
- Ensure operational readiness regarding settlement, reconciliation, and support prior to launch.
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Partner Performance Management
- Monitor partnership performance metrics, including volumes, revenue, active customers, and service quality, against the established business case.
- Conduct regular reviews with partners to assess performance and agree on actions to enhance partnerships or address issues.
- Work with Revenue Assurance to ensure correct calculation, billing, and collection of partner revenue shares and fees.
- Evaluate the partnership success and recommend actions such as renewal, expansion, renegotiation, or termination based on results.
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Market Intelligence and Ecosystem
- Stay abreast of fintech trends, emerging players, and competitor partnerships within the UAE and the region.
- Monitor relevant regulations from the Central Bank of the UAE that impact partnerships, focusing on stored value, retail payment services, and open finance.
- Represent the company at fintech events and industry forums, establishing relationships with fintech hubs and investors.
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Economics, or a related field.
- An MBA or relevant postgraduate qualification is advantageous.
Experience
- 8+ years in partnerships, alliances, business development, or corporate development specifically within payments, fintech, or banking sectors.
- Proven track record in signing and growing commercial partnerships that achieve measurable revenue results.
- Extensive experience in negotiating revenue share, licensing, and white-label agreements.
- Experience with payment gateways, acquirers, wallets, BNPL, issuing processors, or card schemes is highly desirable.
- A robust network within the UAE fintech and payments ecosystem is a strong advantage.
Technical and Payments Knowledge
- Understanding of the payments value chain that includes gateways, acquiring, payment facilitators, schemes, issuing, wallets, and settlement processes.
- Knowledge of various payment methods such as cards, tokenized wallets, BNPL, Aani, and account-to-account payments.
- Familiarity with integration methods such as APIs, SDKs, and hosted pages.
- Understanding of partnership economics including MDR, interchange, revenue share, and unit economics.
- Awareness of UAE payments regulations from the Central Bank, particularly regarding stored value, retail payment services, and open finance frameworks.
Skills
- Strong negotiation skills to close deals that provide mutual benefits.
- Commercially and analytically minded, capable of building and testing business cases.
- Ability to build rapport with founders, senior executives, and technical teams.
- Excellent writing and presentation skills, with comfort in presenting to management and boards.
- Proficient in managing multiple partners and projects simultaneously, ensuring follow-through to successful launch.
