Country Head, Amazon Payment Services

Job description / Role

Description:
As digital payments evolve in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), organizations are going through digital transformation and looking for simpler, safer, and affordable ways to process payments, coupled with a change in consumer behavior in favor of paying for products and services online. The future of payments continues to be digital with double-digit growth across different sectors such as e-commerce, travel, government, insurance, entertainment. Amazon Payment Services (formerly PAYFORT) is at the forefront of innovation, reimaging payments in the MENA region.

At Amazon, we have a long history of providing innovative services for businesses. With Amazon Payment Services, we empower merchants to build trusted, simple, and affordable payment experiences to help them solve many challenges such as increasing electronic payment coverage, increasing purchasing power at checkout, mitigating transactional risks, and offer payment insights via different integration end-points: APIs, Mobile SDKs, and third parties such as shopping carts and booking engines.

Saudi Arabia is at the epicenter of digital transformation and Amazon Payment Services is committed to support the kingdom’s vision in digitizing the economy. To lead this charter, we are seeking a Country Head in Saudi Arabia who will be responsible for defining and executing the go-to-market strategy in the kingdom. This leadership role also owns liaising with the eco-system entities like financial institutions, regulatory bodies and the ministries.

The Country Head role in KSA will drive growth from recruiting new merchants and developing existing merchants. In this leadership role, you will work closely with teams such as Product, Marketing, Integrations & Support, and Go-to-Market to improve merchant experience and increase the use of our service offering. You will lead a team of Business Development Managers with an opportunity to grow. Your main goals will be the launch of directly recruited merchants as well as the total payment volume generated both from new and existing merchants. Key responsibilities include the creation of new and powerful value propositions for merchants. Operating in a fast-moving and challenging environment, Amazon’s culture requires that you are self-motivated and target driven, able to work autonomously and take full control and responsibility for merchant recruiting and account management targets. You will lead a team of Business Development Managers with an opportunity to grow the team.
The position is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Key competencies:
Business Development/Relationship Management: Demonstrated history of successful business development capabilities and using data to identify and prioritize opportunities. Simultaneously, a solid understanding of and passion for the payments landscape and ability to lead the team in developing launch strategies. Create audit mechanisms to help the team to deliver new money goal, retain merchant base, and ensure high merchant satisfaction.

Thought Leadership: Lead the organization in establishing thought leadership with various stakeholders from Financial Regulators & Central Banks around the region through various cadences and mechanisms in partnership with Amazon Public Policy & Legal teams.

Regulatory Compliance: The Country Head will also liaise with partnership team in the process of applying and obtaining required licenses for new business lines when required. Also, they will operationalize the licenses using in-country and central team resources
Hire and develop the best: Will be tasked with managing and developing a high-performance team of Business Developers. Will lead recruitment and career development efforts of staff in Saudi Arabia.

Key Responsibilities:
· Financial targets for total payment volume, revenue, gross margin, and contribution profit in the kingdom
· Launches of directly recruited merchants, primarily in the enterprise and mid-market segments
· Growth and retention of existing merchants, particularly by driving feature and new product adoption as well as ensuring optimized integration of Amazon Payment Services
· Close collaboration with global stakeholders across the entire Amazon Payment Services organization
· Development of key metrics to measure overall business and financial performance and provide the foundation for continuous improvement
· Management of a high-performance organization capable of scaling with the growth of the business, and exemplifying the values of Amazon
· Representation of your team and region in the Amazon Payment Services Leadership Team to contribute to the definition of the long- term strategy, three-year plans, and annual operating plans, providing insightful understanding of the needs, habits and preferences of customers, solution providers, and other internal stakeholders.

Requirements

Basic Qualifications
· Native Arabic Speaker
· 10+ years of total work experience with 5+ years of leadership roles in E-commerce, Digital Payments, Digital transformation domain
· Experienced people leader with the ability to develop and mentor talent within a country Sales/Account Management and Business Development organization
· Bachelor’s degree in a business or in a technical discipline
· Passionate about digital payments, e-commerce and sales
· Experience defining, negotiating and closing complex relationship, including agreements
· Ability to create and implement a strategic vision
· Ability to handle the day-to-day management of tasks and resolution of problems
· Proven analytical skills and quantitative skills with ability to manage the business by the numbers
· Excellent written and verbal communication skills (English and Arabic mandatory)
· Cultural awareness as well as the ability to work effectively across functions (finance, marketing, sales operations, legal etc.)
· Motivation to drive the business, proactive attitude and willingness to roll up sleeves to achieve goals

Preferred Qualifications
· MBA or Technical degree from tier 1 institutions
· Background in payments/Fintech or Consumer Finance businesses and relevant experience in B2B2C businesses
· Experience working in a global, 24x7 support environment
· Owner mentality; willingness to roll up sleeves to meet goals
· Ability to juggle multiple competing priorities and create a sense of urgency in a fast-paced, dynamic environment
· Able to work in a diverse team
· Ability to identify, pursue and implement business opportunities with a focus on the customer, from both a strategic and operational perspective

About the Company

Amazon.ae, formerly Souq.com, is an English-Arabic language e-commerce platform, owned by Amazon, Inc. It is the largest e-commerce platform in the Arab world. On March 28, 2017, Amazon.com Inc. confirmed it would be acquiring Souq.com for $580 million. On May 1, 2019, Souq.com became known as Amazon.ae.