About the Role
This role turns data and market knowledge into commercial decisions that impact pricing, client acquisition, and revenue generation. It serves as the commercial team's trusted source for competitor intelligence, pricing strategies, client profitability analyses, and performance tracking across Acquiring, Issuance, and Wallet services. The ideal candidate will possess strong technical skills related to payment gateways, merchant acquiring, and card issuing processes.
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Key Responsibilities
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Competitive Benchmarking and Market Intelligence
- Build and maintain a benchmark of UAE and regional competitors across acquiring, payment gateways, card issuance, and wallets, including their pricing, products, payment methods, third-party partners, onboarding times, and service levels.
- Track market trends, regulatory changes (CBUAE, schemes, e-invoicing, WPS), and new entrants, translating them into actionable insights for the company.
- Gather customer needs from Sales, client meetings, and lost deals to inform product and pricing strategies.
- Publish quarterly updates on market conditions and competitor status for commercial and leadership teams.
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Analytics, KPI Tracking, and Reporting
- Create regular reports and dashboards using data from the data lake, collaborating with Data and IT teams to ensure data quality and relevance.
- Define and track key commercial KPIs, including TPV, transactions, revenue, take rate, margin, active/inactive merchants, active wallets, and pipeline conversion rates.
- Develop profitability analyses on a per-client and per-segment basis, assessing revenue, cost of sale, partner shares, and service costs.
- Identify low-margin or loss-making clients and recommend actions such as repricing or cost renegotiation.
- Assess the commercial impact of initiatives like smart routing and new products post-launch.
- Clarify variances against budgets and forecasts while highlighting potential risks and opportunities.
- Assist in the annual budgeting and business planning process by predicting volumes, revenue, and margin drivers.
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Pricing and Deal Support
- Maintain the company's rate cards and pricing models across acquiring, issuance, and wallet services.
- Model deal economics before contract proposals are submitted, accounting for interchange, scheme fees, acquirer costs, and applicable margins.
- Provide recommendations for pricing strategies for strategic deals and partner channels, and monitor realized versus list prices.
- Support the preparation of client propositions, presentations, and business cases for strategic government and enterprise clients.
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Team Development
- As the function grows, mentor 1–2 analysts, establishing standards for data definitions, report formats, and model documentation.
Education
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Finance, Economics, or a related field.
- Certifications in payments (e.g., Visa or Mastercard programs) are advantageous.
Experience
- 5–8 years in the payments industry with a payment service provider (PSP), payment gateway, merchant acquirer, card scheme, issuing bank, or payments consultancy.
- Hands-on experience in at least two of the following areas: merchant acquiring, payment gateways, card issuing, digital wallets. Acquiring/payment gateways experience is preferred.
- Experience in building KPI reports, dashboards, and client or segment profitability analyses.
- Familiarity with pricing models and supporting sales through client propositions.
- UAE or GCC payments experience, particularly with government payment platforms, is a strong advantage.
Technical and Payments Knowledge
- Understanding of end-to-end card and wallet transaction processes, including authorization, clearing, settlement, chargebacks, and reconciliation.
- Familiarity with the economics of acceptance and issuing, including interchange, scheme fees, merchant discount rates (MDR), acquirer costs, and partner revenue sharing.
- Knowledge of local and alternative payment methods, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, BNPL, direct debit, and bank transfers.
- Understanding of merchant and wallet lifecycle metrics, such as activation, inactivity, and churn.
- Proficient in SQL and BI tools like Power BI or Tableau for data analysis, along with advanced Excel modeling skills.
Skills
- Strong analytical and modeling skills, capable of transforming messy data into clear recommendations.
- High attention to detail to ensure accuracy and timeliness of reports, from daily to yearly.
- Clear writing and presentation abilities, translating data into management reports and client-ready materials.
- Commercial judgment to discern when a deal is beneficial and when it is not.
- Ability to collaborate effectively across Sales, Product, Finance, Operations, and IT while managing multiple requests simultaneously.
- Excellent communication skills.
