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Head of Payments & Platform Job Umba

Job Title: Head of Payments & Platform
Date Posted: 16/10/2026
Job Type: Full Time
Job Level: Management
Employer: Umba
Industry: Finance
Salary: Open
Location: Nairobi
Country: Kenya
Deadline: 30/10/2026

Finance Jobs, Umba Jobs. Head of Payments & Platform drives payments product strategy and manages banking-as-a-service platform integrations, requires 7+ years payments or fintech experience. Full-time role in Nairobi.

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.

Responsibilities

  • 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.

Requirements

  • 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.

How to Apply

Click here to apply

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