Head of Product, Merchant Solutions (SMME)

Role Overview

This role sets the direction for how micro, small and medium-sized merchants experience payments and business tools across the organisation's markets. Day to day, it combines product discovery, commercial prioritisation and team leadership: deciding which merchant problems matter most, proving that current products are being adopted before expanding the roadmap, and directing engineering and vendor delivery toward measurable gains in active merchants, usage, revenue and credit attachment. It matters because merchants are the growth engine of the payments business, and a clear, data-led merchant product strategy turns fragmented tools into a coherent platform that can be reused across countries.

Key Responsibilities

• Shape the merchant product vision, segment micro, small and medium merchants, and translate that into a multi-year roadmap tied to commercial outcomes such as active merchant numbers, product usage, revenue and credit attachment.
• Own the end-to-end merchant product portfolio, including acceptance channels such as till, Buy Goods, Paybill and QR, merchant-facing apps and portals, notifications, reconciliation, business management tools and value-added services.
• Champion adoption of existing capabilities before commissioning new builds. Design and run structured experiments across onboarding, configuration and engagement, and hold the team accountable for moving the numbers.
• Work with financial services teams to create merchant working-capital and credit journeys that make strong use of transaction data, and repair broken steps in the application and approval funnel.
• Advance a single merchant identity and shared data model across products, giving each merchant one consistent view of their business and enabling every market to reuse what is built in Kenya.
• Establish the evidence base for product decisions: define core merchant metrics and their denominators, instrument key journeys, and use data and merchant research rather than opinion to prioritise the roadmap.
• Lead product input into vendor selection and contracts, with close attention to data rights, intellectual property and cross-market reuse; manage delivery with internal engineering and external partners.
• Build and lead a high-performing product team, setting the operating rhythm for discovery, product requirement documents, releases and post-launch reviews.

Requirements & Qualifications

Essential

• At least ten years in product management, with four or more of those years spent leading product teams or owning a product portfolio.
• Substantial experience in African mobile money, payments or fintech, ideally gained through merchant, SME or agent products that operate at scale.
• A proven record of taking products from launch to growth in Kenya or similar East African markets, supported by measurable commercial outcomes.
• A firm command of the economics behind merchant payments, covering acceptance, pricing, settlement, reconciliation and the merchant lifecycle.
• Comfort with data: capable of defining metrics, partnering with analysts, reading SQL query results and designing controlled experiments.
• Experience operating across complicated stakeholder landscapes, including operators, group functions, regulators and external partners, and a record of influencing without direct authority.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to present confidently to senior executives.
• A bachelor's degree in business, economics, engineering, computer science or another relevant discipline.

Desirable

• Product experience spanning multiple African countries.
• Exposure to SME lending, working capital or credit products built on data.
• Experience managing external technology vendors and commercial contracts.
• Familiarity with Central Bank of Kenya rules and regional payments and data protection regulation.
• An MBA or a relevant postgraduate qualification.