Head of Payments and Platform

 

About Umba

Umba is a digital-first bank group operating in Kenya and Nigeria. Umba Microfinance Bank in Kenya is licensed by the Central Bank of Kenya. The bank's lending business (vehicle finance, SME lending, trade finance) has grown every month this year, and its engineering team has shipped several new products in the last six months. The next layer is payments and platform banking: letting fintechs, platforms and payment companies build on Umba's licence and rails, and giving Kenyan businesses faster, cheaper ways to pay and be paid across borders.

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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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Remittance termination. Umba as a receiving bank for money transfer operators, with payout to bank accounts and M-Pesa.
4. Credit alongside accounts. With our credit team, lending to partners' merchants and customers on our rails.

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What You'll Do

• 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.

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What We're Looking For

• 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.

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Why Now

A licensed bank, a core banking stack built in-house, an engineering team that ships, and a leadership team that wants payments to be the next line of the business. You will build it from the first partner. The opportunity to build the category-defining company is now.