Director, Ecommerce Acquiring Relationships

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

About The Role

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.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities Merchant Acquisition & Growth

• 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)

Relationship Management

• 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 escalate
• 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)

Internal Collaboration

• 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

Requirements Experience & Background

• 3-6 years experience 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

Technical Aptitude

• 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

Soft Skills

• 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

Nice to Have

• 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