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About the Role This role turns data and market knowledge into commercial decisions, influencing pricing strategies, client acquisition, and profitability. It acts as the commercial team's single source of truth for competitor intelligence, pricing, client profitability, and performance tracking across Acquiring, Issuance, and Wallet. The successful candidate will have a strong technical understanding of how payment gateways, merchant acquiring, and card issuing work. Key Responsibilities 1. Competitive Benchmarking and Market Intelligence - Build and maintain a benchmark of UAE and regional competitors across acquiring, payment gateways, card issuance, and wallets, including pricing, products, payment methods, third-party partners, onboarding time, and service levels. - Track market/emerging trends, regulations (CBUAE, schemes, e-invoicing, WPS), and new entrants, translating them into clear implications for the company. - Gather customer needs from Sales, client meetings, and lost deals, integrating feedback into product and pricing decisions. - Publish a quarterly market and competitor update for commercial and leadership teams. 2. Analytics, KPI Tracking and Reporting - Create regular reports and dashboards from the data lake, collaborating with Data and IT teams on data requirements, definitions, and data quality. - Define and track commercial KPIs: TPV, transactions, revenue, take rate, margin, active merchants, inactive merchants, active wallets, and cards, and pipeline conversion. - Develop and manage a profitability view per client and per segment, including revenue, cost of sale, partner share, and cost to serve. - Identify loss-making or low-margin clients and propose corrective actions such as repricing, payment method routing, or cost renegotiation. - Assess the commercial impact of initiatives like smart routing, new pricing, and new products post-launch. - Explain variances against budget and forecast, while identifying risks and opportunities early. - Support the annual budget and business plan with volumes, revenue, and margin drivers. 3. Pricing and Deal Support - Maintain the company's rate cards and pricing models for acquiring (by MCC, card type, domestic or international, e-commerce or POS), issuance, and wallet services. - Model deal economics prior to quotes going out: interchange, scheme fees, acquirer and partner costs, and the resulting margin. - Recommend price points and floors for strategic deals and partner channels, tracking realized versus list pricing. - Assist in preparing client propositions, presentations, and business cases for strategic government and enterprise clients. 4. Team Development - As the function expands, mentor 1–2 analysts and set standards for data definitions, report formats, and model documentation. Education - Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Finance, Economics, or a related field. - Payments certifications (e.g., Visa or Mastercard programs) are an advantage. Experience - 5–8 years in payments with a PSP, payment gateway, merchant acquirer, card scheme, issuing bank, or payments consultancy. - Hands-on exposure to at least two of merchant acquiring, payment gateways, card issuing, and digital wallets (acquiring/payment gateways experience preferred). - Experience in building KPI reports, dashboards, and client or segment profitability analyses. - Familiarity with pricing models and supporting sales with client propositions. - UAE or GCC payments experience, including government payment platforms, is a strong advantage. Technical and Payments Knowledge - Understanding how card and wallet transactions flow end-to-end: authorization, clearing, settlement, chargebacks, and reconciliation. - Knowledge of the economics of acceptance and issuing: interchange, scheme fees, MDR, acquirer costs, and partner revenue share. - Familiarity with local and alternative payment methods: Apple Pay, Google Pay, BNPL, direct debit, Aani, and bank transfers. - Understanding merchant and wallet lifecycle metrics: activation, inactivity, and churn. - Working knowledge of SQL and BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau, sufficient to define requirements, check data, and build simple views; advanced Excel modeling is necessary. Skills - Strong analytical and modeling skills; capable of transforming messy data into clear recommendations. - High attention to detail; ensures accuracy and timeliness of reports from daily to yearly. - Clear writing and presentation skills; able to convert data into management reports and client-ready material. - Commercial judgement; recognizes when a deal is profitable and when it is not. - Ability to work cross-functionally with Sales, Product, Finance, Operations, and IT; capable of managing multiple requests simultaneously. - Excellent communication skills.
