Manager - Acquiring Business

This role owns noqodi's acquiring business end to end: its growth, its margin and its setup. The Manager sets the acquiring strategy, manages the acquiring banks, processors and card schemes behind it, and makes sure every merchant noqodi signs is priced, onboarded, settled and monitored correctly.

The role does not manage a sales team directly. It equips the sales teams with the pricing, propositions and products they need, works with Business Intelligence on data and deal economics, and with Product on new acquiring products.

1. Acquiring strategy and performance

•     Own the acquiring business plan and budget across SME and Strategic Account Acquiring: TPV, revenue, take rate, cost of acceptance and margin.

•     Set targets by segment and channel with the sales managers, and track delivery monthly.

•     Lead noqodi's move from using third-party acquirers to acquiring in its own right, including the merchant and sub-merchant (payment facilitator) model and MID strategy.

•     Report acquiring performance, risks and actions to the Director – Commercials and leadership.

2. Acquirer, processor and scheme management

•     Manage relationships and contracts with acquiring banks, processors, gateways (such as MPGS) and card schemes (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Jaywan).

•     Negotiate acquiring and processing costs, and drive smart routing to lower the cost of acceptance.

•     Own scheme compliance for acquiring: MCC assignment, scheme rules, chargeback and fraud thresholds, and required certifications, with Risk and Compliance.

•     Work with CBUAE-facing teams on the regulatory requirements for acquiring.

3. Pricing and propositions

•     Own the acquiring rate cards by MCC, card type, channel (e-commerce, POS, SoftPOS) and domestic or international cards.

•     Approve deal pricing for strategic and SME merchants within agreed margin floors, using deal economics prepared with Business Intelligence.

•     Build acquiring propositions and support the sales teams on key deals, client meetings and RFPs.

•     Track realised vs list pricing and margin per merchant segment, and act on low-margin merchants.

4. Merchant onboarding, risk and operations

•     Set the merchant onboarding policy with Risk and Compliance: KYB, underwriting, MCC classification and risk tiers.

•     Keep onboarding fast: target turnaround time from signed contract to live merchant, including terminal and gateway setup.

•     Oversee settlement, reconciliation, chargebacks and fraud monitoring with Operations and Finance.

•     Manage the POS, SoftPOS and ECR partner set-up, including integration partners such as POS software providers.

5. Product development

•     Work with Product on the acquiring roadmap: payment gateway, POS, SoftPOS, Pay by Link, DCC, Amex acceptance, tokenisation, BNPL and alternative payment methods.

•     Write business requirements and business cases for new acquiring products and features.

•     Plan launches and go-to-market with the sales teams, and track adoption and revenue after launch.

6. Sales enablement

•     Train the SME and Strategic Account sales teams on acquiring products, pricing and onboarding.

•     Give the sales teams the tools they need: rate cards, proposition templates, product sheets and onboarding checklists.

•     Support the SME Acquiring Manager on partner channels, including Outsourced Sales Partners.

Requirements

Education

•     Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Finance, Business or a related field.

•     An MBA or payments certifications (for example Visa or Mastercard programmes) are an advantage.

Experience

•     8–12 years in merchant acquiring with a bank, acquirer, PSP or payment facilitator.

•     Has owned an acquiring P&L, product line or major merchant portfolio.

•     Has managed acquiring banks, processors or schemes, including contract and cost negotiations.

•     Experience setting up a new acquiring business, licence or payment facilitator model is a strong advantage.

•     UAE or GCC acquiring experience, including government merchants, is a strong advantage.

Technical and payments knowledge

•     Card transaction flows end to end: authorisation, clearing, settlement, chargebacks and reconciliation.

•     Acquiring economics: interchange, scheme fees, MDR, interchange++ pricing, acquirer and processing costs.

•     Gateways, 3DS, tokenisation, POS and SoftPOS terminals, ECR integrations and PCI DSS requirements.

•     Scheme rules and merchant risk: MCC, KYB and underwriting, chargeback and fraud monitoring programmes.

•     Payment facilitator and sub-merchant models, and local payment methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Aani and BNPL.

Skills

•     Commercial judgement: knows what a merchant is worth and when a deal makes money.

•     Strong negotiator with banks, processors, schemes and large merchants.

•     Leads through influence: gets results from sales, product, operations and risk teams without managing them directly.

•     Clear writing and presentation skills; builds business cases, propositions and management reports.

•     Fluent English; Arabic is an advantage.