Commercial Manager - Payments & SME Business

Purpose

Your role

Context

B2B & SME Commercial Development

• Develop and execute commercial strategies to grow Ooredoo Fintech’s B2B and SME revenue base across all active markets, working hand-in-hand with country teams
• Identify SME segments with the highest product-market fit for digital financial services (payments, WPS); build market-specific commercial playbooks for rapid deployment
• Design and negotiate commercial models, fee structures, and bundling strategies for SME payment acceptance, wallet solutions, and business accounts
• Lead commercial onboarding discussions with SME partners, merchant aggregators, and B2B clients; support country teams in closing commercial agreements
• Monitor SME acquisition funnels, activation rates, and revenue contribution by market, implementing commercial interventions to improve conversion and retention

WPS (Wage Protection System) Growth

• Own commercial development of the WPS business line across all markets where Ooredoo Fintech operates or plans to launch WPS services.
• Build scalable WPS commercial propositions and bank partnerships tailored to local labour regulations and employer needs in each country
• Support country teams in acquiring WPS clients – from SMEs to large corporates – with commercial frameworks, pitch materials, and negotiation support
• Analyse WPS transaction trends, employer retention, and salary disbursement volumes to identify commercial optimisation opportunities
• Develop employer incentive programs and employee benefit add-ons (e.g., advances, savings, card products) to increase WPS stickiness and cross-sell revenue

Acquiring Business

• Drive the commercial rollout and revenue growth of merchant acquiring services
• Support the country teams in leading merchant acquiring commercial initiatives: define merchant fee strategies, merchant rollout incentives, and payment gateway commercial terms in collaboration with country and product teams
• Identify and commercially onboard new acquiring partners, payment facilitators, and card scheme relationships to expand acceptance footprint

Data-Driven Commercial Intelligence

• Build and maintain multi-market dashboards tracking revenue performance, customer acquisition, channel efficiency, and product penetration across all business lines.
• Conduct deep-dive analyses on transaction data, customer cohorts, and market benchmarks to surface commercial opportunities and pricing optimisations
• Develop forecasting models for revenue potential, customer growth, and market opportunity sizing to support investment decisions and country prioritisation
• Use A/B testing frameworks, pilot result analysis, and cohort tracking to validate commercial hypotheses before full-market rollout.
• Generate actionable intelligence from data to support leadership decision-making on partner negotiations, product bundling, and market entry sequencing

Innovation & New Commercial Initiatives

• Identify and evaluate emerging payment technologies, financial services trends, and business models that can generate incremental revenue or customer growth.
• Champion data-and-innovation-led commercial thinking – proactively proposing new products, channels, or partnership models based on market evidence and customer data.
• Lead or co-lead commercial pilots for new business lines, structuring tests with clear KPIs, success criteria, and scale-up triggers.
• Stay ahead of competitive dynamics across all active markets, providing regular intelligence on competitor product launches, pricing changes, and partnership moves.

(KPIs)

• Joint ownership of P&L for each country across product lines
• SME & B2B Customer Acquisition: Setup of SME business in multiple countries + number of new SME clients onboarded per market per quarter
• WPS-Salary Payment Transaction Volume & Employer Retention Rate across active relevant markets
• Merchant Acquiring Volume Growth and new merchant acquisition numbers by market
• Commercial Initiative Launch Velocity: Time-to-market for new partnerships and commercial programs related to B2B Payments, SME and merchant acquiring business

Experience

• Master's degree in Business, Finance, Economics, or related discipline; MBA or advanced degree preferred
• 8+ years of experience in SME banking, lending business or commercial management within fintech, banking, or digital financial services
• Demonstrated experience working in matrix organisations spanning multiple geographies, with exposure to GCC, MENA, and/or South-East Asian markets
• Proven track record in commercial P&L ownership across multiple financial services products
• Hands-on experience with merchant acquiring, or WPS business development
• Advanced proficiency in data analytics tools (e.g. Power BI, Tableau, SQL, Excel modelling) with a track record of data-driven commercial decisions
• Experience structuring and negotiating commercial partnerships with banks, payment aggregators, and/or fintech partners
• Familiarity with regulatory frameworks governing digital payments and financial services across GCC/MENA markets

Minimum Entry Qualifications

• 6+ years of P&L ownership and experience in commercial/business management within fintech, banking, or digital financial services
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Economics, or related discipline; MBA or advanced degree preferred
• Experience in at least two of the following: B2B Payments, WPS, SME Financial Services, Merchant Acquiring
• Comfortable working in a multi-country, cross-functional environment with multiple simultaneous commercial initiatives
• Strong analytical and data literacy skills; able to build and interpret commercial dashboards and performance models

Personal Profile

• Matrix Navigator: Thrives in complex, multi-stakeholder environments; able to drive commercial outcomes without direct authority, building influence across geographies, functions, and seniority levels.
• Data-Driven Decision Maker: Instinctively reaches for data before forming a commercial view; builds models, dashboards, and analyses that others act on; balances rigor with speed.
• Innovation Mindset: Brings creative commercial thinking to established categories – finding new ways to bundle products, structure partnerships, or enter markets that competitors have not yet considered.
• Commercial Sharpness: Result-oriented; understands unit economics, pricing dynamics, and partner incentives; knows how to structure deals that create sustainable, mutual value.
• Multi-Market Agility: Comfortable switching contexts across very different regulatory, cultural, and competitive environments; adapts commercial playbooks without losing strategic coherence.
• Communication Excellence: Able to distil complex commercial situations into clear, compelling narratives for senior leadership, partners, and operational teams – in written reports, dashboards, and live discussions.
• Integrity & Compliance Awareness: Holds high ethical standards in all commercial dealings; understands the importance of regulatory compliance in licensed financial services environments and proactively escalates risk.
• Customer-Centric: Grounds commercial strategy in a genuine understanding of what SME, B2B, and individual customers need