Director, Ecommerce Acquiring Relationships

Location: Dubai, UAE |
Reports to: AVP, E-commerce Business |
Department: Merchant Acquiring Business

We're looking for a commercially minded Director of Relationships to join our E-commerce Acquiring team. You'll own the end-to-end merchant experience for a portfolio of online key and enterprise merchants, from onboarding and technical integration through to ongoing optimization and growth. This is a hybrid hunter-farmer role. You'll contribute to pipeline development and new merchant acquisition while managing and growing existing relationships.

You'll need to be equally comfortable in a commercial negotiation as you are troubleshooting an authorization decline pattern with a merchant's tech team. The ideal candidate combines technical curiosity with commercial instinct, someone who can translate complex payment flows into business value and navigate internal stakeholders to deliver for merchants.

• Support pipeline development through lead qualification, merchant outreach, and proposal preparation
• Conduct discovery sessions to understand merchant payment needs, volumes, and technical requirements
• Prepare and present commercial proposals including IC++ pricing structures
• Identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities within existing portfolio (omnichannel, value-added services)

• Serve as primary point of contact for assigned merchant portfolio, building trusted relationships with key stakeholders
• Conduct quarterly business reviews analyzing transaction volumes, authorization rates, and optimization opportunities
• Proactively monitor merchant’s account health and address issues before they escalated
• Manage merchant communications regarding scheme changes, compliance requirements, and service updates
• Track payment issues including authorization failures, settlement discrepancies, and chargeback disputes and liaise with the relevant support teams to solve and optimize
• Analyze transaction data to identify optimization opportunities (auth rates, decline reasons, retry strategies)

• Navigate internal processes to expedite merchant onboarding, pricing approvals, and technical escalations
• Provide market feedback to Product teams on merchant needs and competitive gaps
• Maintain accurate CRM records and pipeline reporting

• 3-6 years’ experience in a client-facing role (RM, Account Management, Sales, Customer Success) in one of the following industries:
  Fintech, Payments, E-commerce, SaaS, Software business
• Basic understanding of card payment flows
• Basic technical knowledge of how technological systems work
• Experience working with online/e-commerce merchants (payment gateway, API integrations)
• Regional experience in GCC/MENA markets preferred
• Business proficiency in English both verbal and written

• Know how API works, comfortable with reading the documentation and discussing on a high-level technical integration (not coding, but technical fluency)
• Ability to interpret transaction data, authorization logs, and decline reason codes
• Understanding of 3DS, tokenization, fraud screening, and PCI DSS basics
• Proficiency in Excel for data analysis and reporting

• Willing to continuously learn and evolve
• Hunter mindset with patience for long sales cycles and complex implementations
• Strong commercial acumen, ability to structure deals and articulate value
• Excellent communication skills; confident presenting to senior merchant stakeholders
• Problem-solver who can navigate internal bureaucracy to deliver results
• Self-starter comfortable with ambiguity in a fast-evolving competitive landscape

• Mandarin Chinese/Russian language skills (spoken and/or written) - strong advantage given growing Chinese merchant presence in the region
• Prior Payments Experience at a PSP, payment gateway, or acquiring bank
• Background in specific verticals: travel, marketplaces, BNPL, gaming, or cross-border e-commerce
• Familiarity with scheme rules (Visa, Mastercard) and compliance requirements