Sr. Analyst

About the Role / About the Job
The Acceptance Solutions team is part of the Value-Added Services (VAS) organization and is responsible for enabling and growing acceptance products and services across the Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA) region. This role will lead the company's acceptance localization strategy and execution across this region, focusing on identifying, prioritizing, and delivering localization requirements necessary to support domestic payment schemes, national payment infrastructure initiatives, local routing mandates, regulatory requirements, and market-specific acceptance needs.

The successful candidate will serve as the CEMEA subject matter expert for card-present acceptance localization and will work closely with regulators, national payment companies, financial institutions, acquirers, processors, merchants, and internal stakeholders to ensure the company's in-person acceptance capabilities support local market requirements and evolving payment ecosystem needs. Extensive collaboration with Global Product teams, Core Processing and Network teams, Technology teams, Government Engagement, Legal, Risk, and Compliance organizations is essential to assess market requirements, define product and processing enhancements, influence product roadmaps, and drive the delivery of localization initiatives across the acceptance ecosystem.

This position is ideal for a candidate with extensive experience in merchant acquiring, payment acceptance, payment processing, domestic payment schemes, regulatory programs, or in-person payments product management, reporting to the Acceptance Solutions Lead within the VAS organization.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for in-person acceptance localization across CEMEA, covering merchant acquiring, acceptance infrastructure, card-present payments, domestic payment schemes, and local routing initiatives.
• Lead the company's regional strategy for localization of in-person acceptance capabilities to address regulatory requirements, domestic payment scheme mandates, and national payment infrastructure initiatives.
• Analyze and translate regulatory, market, and domestic scheme requirements into clearly documented business, operational, and technical requirements.
• Partner with regulators, central banks, national payment companies, and government stakeholders to understand evolving payment ecosystem requirements and represent the company's acceptance capabilities.
• Collaborate closely with Government Engagement, Legal, Risk, Compliance, and Regional Product teams to assess local payment requirements and define the company's response strategy.
• Work with Global Product, Technology, Acceptance Solutions, and Core Processing teams to build business cases, prioritize market requirements, and drive product roadmap enhancements.
• Partner with network processing and core processing teams to evaluate technical implications of localization initiatives and identify scalable implementation approaches.
• Manage end-to-end execution of localization initiatives, including requirements gathering, impact assessments, stakeholder alignment, business case development, delivery tracking, testing, certification support, and market readiness activities.
• Support domestic payment scheme enablement initiatives, including co-badging programs, local routing, domestic acceptance mandates, and national payment infrastructure projects.
• Assess acquiring, processing, and acceptance ecosystem readiness to support market-specific payment requirements.
• Engage with acquirers, processors, payment service providers (PSPs), payment facilitators, terminal vendors, merchants, fintechs, and ecosystem participants to understand implementation challenges and support deployment readiness.
• Identify product gaps and regional customization requirements, working with global teams to prioritize and deliver solutions addressing local market needs.
• Develop market assessments, strategy recommendations, and executive-level updates to support regional and global decision-making.
• Responsible for annual planning activities for localization initiatives, including KPI setting, strategic priorities, delivery objectives, and cross-functional alignment.
• Monitor progress of localization programs and provide regular updates to senior leadership on market readiness, implementation status, risks, and dependencies.
• Represent the company at industry forums, regulatory discussions, market working groups, and client engagements related to payment acceptance, domestic schemes, and localization initiatives.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, Finance, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in payments, merchant acquiring, card-present acceptance, payment processing, fintech, or related industries.
• Deep expertise in merchant acquiring, payment acceptance ecosystems, and card-present payment processing.
• Proven experience working with financial institutions, acquirers, processors, payment service providers, merchants, fintechs, payment networks, or national payment organizations.
• Strong knowledge of card-present payments, including:
  • EMV chip acceptance
  • Contactless payments
  • NFC technologies
  • SoftPOS / Tap-to-Phone
  • Android POS
  • Unattended commerce
  • Transit acceptance
  • Mobile wallet acceptance
  • QR-based acceptance solutions
• Strong understanding of payment processing and transaction lifecycles, including authorization, clearing, settlement, routing, switching, and acquiring architectures.
• Working knowledge of payment technologies and standards including ISO 8583, EMV specifications, contactless frameworks, tokenization concepts, terminal certification processes, and network routing models.
• Demonstrated experience supporting payment localization initiatives, domestic payment schemes, local routing programs, regulatory projects, or national payment infrastructure modernization efforts.
• Strong understanding of the payments landscape across GCC and broader CEMEA markets, including domestic schemes, regulatory frameworks, national payment infrastructure, and local routing requirements.
• Experience working with regulators, central banks, national payment companies, or government stakeholders is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with leading acquiring and payment processing platforms such as OpenWay, BPC, Compass Plus, ACI, Fiserv, or equivalent solutions is also preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to translate market requirements into product, technology, and operational deliverables.
• Experience driving complex cross-functional programs involving business, product, technology, legal, regulatory, and external stakeholders.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to develop business cases and strategic recommendations.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and program management skills.
• Excellent ability to communicate complex technical and business concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Capability to manage multiple strategic initiatives in a fast-paced and highly matrixed environment.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to engage senior executives, clients, regulators, and industry partners.
• Excellent PowerPoint and Excel skills to support strategy development, business cases, executive communications, and market assessments.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in both English and Arabic.
• Willingness to travel across GCC and CEMEA markets as required.

Work Environment
The company requires at least 3 days in office, with the specific expectations of these days to be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.