Director, CEMEA Embedded Payments and Partnerships - Dubai - Visa

Description

Director, CEMEA Embedded Payments and Partnerships

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, dedicated to uplifting everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

At Visa, you will create impact at scale—tackling meaningful challenges, growing your skills and seeing your contributions impact lives worldwide.

Job Description

• Lead the CEMEA embedded payments product strategy, ensuring regional requirements, regulations, and customer needs are reflected in global product roadmaps and platform capabilities.
• Translate market insights and sub-regional feedback into prioritized features, integrations, and go-to-market initiatives for embedded payments solutions.
• Identify and prioritize high-impact use cases across segments (SMBs, Mid and Large Enterprises), countries, and applications such as ERP, Procure-to-Pay (P2P), vertical SaaS, and expense platforms.
• Partner with global product and technology teams to define common services, reusable components, and API-first capabilities that support multiple embedded payment use cases across the region.
• Work with sub-regional teams to identify priority markets, customer segments, and use cases, and shape commercialization plans for embedded payment offerings.
• Drive end-to-end product deployment of embedded payments in CEMEA, from concept and requirements through launch, optimization, and lifecycle management.
• Support design and delivery of integrations into ERP, accounting, procure-to-pay, expense management, and vertical SaaS platforms relevant to CEMEA enterprises and SMEs.
• Ensure solutions address both buyer and supplier needs in B2B payment flows, including virtual card usage, reconciliation, and workflow automation.
• Partner with sales, marketing, and client-facing teams to support opportunity qualification, solution positioning, pricing inputs, and customer proposals.
• Oversee pilot programs and phased rollouts with issuers, platforms, and key anchor clients, ensuring clear success metrics and scalable playbooks.
• Serve as the regional liaison to global strategic partners, facilitating their go-to-market activities through collaborative marketing efforts, sales enablement, and coordinated joint initiatives.
• Identify, evaluate, and develop strategic partnerships with platforms, fintechs, ERPs, accounting platforms, PSPs, and systems integrators across CEMEA that can accelerate embedded payments adoption.
• Lead commercial and product engagement with partners, including co-development opportunities, technical alignment, and joint go-to-market activities.
• Maintain strong relationships with issuer partners to align embedded payments propositions with their commercial priorities and distribution strategies.
• Act as the central CEMEA point of contact for embedded payments with global product, technology, risk, legal, compliance, and operations functions.
• Coordinate regional and sub-regional stakeholders, ensuring alignment on priorities, delivery timelines, and resource needs for embedded payment initiatives.
• Establish and track KPIs for integrations, partner onboarding, activation, usage, and revenue contribution from embedded payment solutions in CEMEA.
• Ensure embedded payment solutions and partner integrations comply with relevant CEMEA regulatory, scheme, and internal policy requirements.
• Champion superior customer and partner experience across onboarding, integration, and ongoing usage, using feedback and data to drive continuous improvement.
• Proactively identify and mitigate risks related to technical delivery, partner performance, commercialization, and market entry.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of work experience with a Bachelor's Degree or 8-10 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, MD) or 6+ years of work experience with a PhD.
• 10+ years in payments, fintech, embedded finance, or enterprise SaaS, with a strong track record in product management and/or product partnerships.
• Deep understanding of B2B payments and AP/AR workflows, including ERP, accounting, procure-to-pay, and expense management platforms.
• Proven experience leading complex API and middleware/iPaaS integrations with technology teams and external partners.
• Strong exposure to CEMEA markets and experience localizing global products for regulatory and customer needs.
• Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and influencing skills in a matrixed global organization.
• Experience with issuers, fintechs, and platforms in designing and commercializing embedded payment propositions.
• Demonstrated leadership of cross-functional or regional product teams, including virtual, multi-market teams.
• Strong analytical skills with the ability to build business cases, set KPIs, and drive data-based decisions.
• MBA or relevant advanced degree preferred.
• Location: Dubai. Travel 20–30% within the region.

This is a hybrid position. Office presence will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Visa is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or veteran status. Visa also considers qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.