Other · Full-time
M-Pesa Africa: Head of Product, Merchant Solutions (SMME)
KenyaSenior · HybridPublished 30 September 2026Closed 7 October 2026
About this role
This plain-English summary was prepared by work.ke from the original advert while it was open.
Role overview
Safaricom PLC is hiring a Head of Product for Merchant Solutions at M-Pesa Africa, based in Kenya. This senior full-time role suits someone with extensive product management experience in fintech, especially in mobile money and merchant services. The position involves leading the merchant product portfolio and developing solutions for micro, small, and medium enterprises.
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What you will do
- Define the merchant product vision, segmentation and multi-year roadmap targeting active merchants, usage, revenue, and credit attach.
- Manage the entire merchant product portfolio including acceptance methods, merchant apps, notifications, reconciliation, business tools, and value-added services.
- Prioritise activating existing merchant products before building new ones through structured experiments on onboarding and engagement.
- Collaborate with financial services to design working capital and credit journeys using transaction data effectively.
- Drive the creation of a single merchant identity and common data model for consistent merchant views and product reuse across markets.
- Establish core merchant metrics, instrument user journeys, and base roadmap decisions on data and merchant research.
- Lead product input for vendor selection and contracts, focusing on data rights, intellectual property, and cross-market reuse, and manage delivery with engineering and partners.
- Build and lead a high-performing product team and set the product operating rhythm including discovery, product requirement documents, releases, and reviews.
Requirements
- At least 10 years in product management, including 4 years leading product teams or portfolios.
- Strong experience in mobile money, payments, or fintech in Africa, especially with merchant, SME, or agent products at scale.
- Proven success launching and growing products in Kenya or similar East African markets with measurable commercial outcomes.
- Deep understanding of merchant payments economics including acceptance, pricing, settlement, reconciliation, and lifecycle.
- Data fluency with ability to define metrics, work with analysts and SQL outputs, and design experiments.
- Experience managing complex stakeholder environments and influencing without direct authority.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including presenting to senior executives.
- Bachelor's degree in business, economics, engineering, computer science or related field.
- Preferred: Multi-market product experience across African countries.
- Preferred: Exposure to SME lending, working capital or data-driven credit products.
- Preferred: Experience managing third-party technology vendors and commercial contracts.
- Preferred: Knowledge of Central Bank of Kenya and regional payments and data protection regulations.
- Preferred: MBA or relevant postgraduate qualification.