Head of Payments and Platform

Umba

Umba combines advanced tools and techniques to optimize risk exposures in emerging markets that are currently underserved by traditional banking services.

The Role

• We are hiring a Head of Payments and Platform to build and run that layer. The job is to turn a licence, a working core banking stack and an engineering team into a payments business with paying partners.

You will own four things, in this order:

• The accounts platform. Our banking-as-a-service product: accounts, collections and payouts for partners' customers through our API. You define the first release with engineering, run partner onboarding with Compliance, and get the first partners live.
• Cross-border payments and FX. The settlement routes for our customers' supplier payments and international receipts, the pricing to customers, and the daily treasury position with Finance.
• Remittance termination. Umba as a receiving bank for money transfer operators, with payout to bank accounts and M-Pesa.
• Credit alongside accounts. With our credit team, lending to partners' merchants and customers on our rails.

What You'll Do

• Write the product specifications engineering builds from, and the term sheets partners sign.

• Sign and onboard the first platform partners: payment companies, fintechs, marketplaces and vertical software platforms that need accounts, collections and payouts on a bank licence.

• Choose and contract the settlement routes, run the comparison on price, speed and counterparty risk, and keep them performing.

• Set pricing: platform fees, per-account and per-transaction fees, FX margins, remittance termination fees.

• Build the small team around you: a treasury dealer, partner success, and later a sales lead.

• Work with Compliance on partner approvals, KYC reliance models and regulatory approvals.

• Own the numbers: partners live, accounts opened, volume, revenue, and the capital and liquidity the business consumes.

• What We're Looking For

• 7+ years in payments, fintech, or financial services — banking-as-a-service or fintech in East Africa, with cross-border or remittance experience preferred.

• You have built or run a sponsor-bank, aggregator or PSP integration from the inside. You know what fintechs need from a bank's API.

• You have dealt with the Central Bank of Kenya or an equivalent regulator on product approvals.

• You can read a treasury position, price FX and payments, and explain a fee schedule to a partner's CFO.

• You can sell and close, and you can write: a specification an engineer can build from, a term sheet a counterparty can sign.

• A network among Kenyan and regional fintechs, payment companies and remittance operators.

• Useful but not required: experience with digital-asset payment infrastructure, and with core banking systems.

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