Lead, Business and Operations

AXIAN Group; Dubai; Sur place; AED 200 000 - 320 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

AXIAN Group's Pôle Digibank & Fintech unit is establishing a dedicated operating company to deliver settlement, treasury and regulatory access for corridors across Indian Ocean and Africa. The Lead, Business and Operations will drive corridor economics, partner relationships and day-to-day operations under tight controls.

The role requires constructing robust business cases, negotiating with banks and liquidity providers, and ensuring procedures support audits and regulatory reporting.

Qualifications

• Postgraduate qualification in business, finance, economics or related discipline.
• Eight years or more in payments, remittances, mobile money, correspondent banking or digital assets; at least 3 years with P&L or corridor target.
• Experience taking cross-border payment or settlement flow from inception to live volume, including nostro and float management.
• Experience in at least one African market with exposure to FX scarcity and soft-currency risk.

Responsabilités

• Construct and defend corridor business cases for multiple markets against cluster and Group review.
• Negotiate and conclude agreements with banks, payment institutions and liquidity providers.
• Establish operating procedures to enable auditors to reconstruct activities and decisions.
• Oversee treasury, liquidity management and unit economics across corridors.
• Coordinate with licensing and engineering leads on approvals, custody and integrations.
• Prepare board reports and manage commercial performance and forecast.

Connaissances

Cross-border payments

Regulated entity operations

Financial modelling

Stakeholder management

English fluency

Formation

Master's degree in business/finance

Outils

ERP systems

Audit/compliance tools

Description du poste

The Pôle Digibank & Fintech operates Mixx mobile money services in Madagascar, Tanzania, Senegal, Togo and the Comoros, and is developing the cluster's digital banking proposition. The 2030 strategy commits the cluster to revenue beyond the wallet and to the transition from mobile money towards financial services. Stablecoin settlement and digital asset services form part of that trajectory and are at present the only component of it with no dedicated structure, no licence and no team.

A dedicated operating company is accordingly being established within the cluster to deliver three capabilities on a single infrastructure: settlement between the cluster's markets and the corridors serving them, regulated access to United States dollar holdings for customers in soft-currency markets, and payout, collection and treasury services for merchants, platforms and institutional partners. The entity will not operate a trading venue, issue a token or hold a proprietary position.

Within this framework, the Lead, Business and Operations is responsible for the commercial result of the entity and for its day-to-day operation. At the scale at which the entity begins, these are a single function: the corridors sold are the corridors operated, and the economics of each depend on the discipline with which float, reconciliation and partner relationships are managed.

The position requires the ability to construct a corridor business case that will withstand examination by the cluster and by Group, to negotiate and conclude agreements with banks, payment institutions and liquidity providers, and to establish the operating procedures that allow an auditor to reconstruct what occurred and why. It further requires a working command of stablecoin mechanics as a settlement instrument rather than as an asset class.

The Lead, Business and Operations will be principally responsible for commercial and operational production: corridor roadmap, counterparty pipeline, treasury and liquidity, operating procedures and the unit economics. The position works in a group of three alongside the Lead, Licensing, responsible for authorisation and market access, and the Lead, Engineering, responsible for custody, ledger and integrations. What may be offered commercially is determined by the licence and by what the infrastructure can safely hold, and the corridor plan is accordingly constructed with those two positions.

Examples of matters handled: corridor business case and pricing, negotiation with a liquidity provider or an on-ramp partner, fiat banking arrangements in an operating market, float placement and pre-funding strategy, rebalancing between fiat and stablecoin legs, daily reconciliation and break investigation, dispute and chargeback handling, incident management with engineering, contribution margin analysis by corridor, and board reporting.

• Corridor roadmap: determination of which corridors are opened, in what order and at what price, together with the business case supporting each and the formal recommendation against those not pursued.
• Commercial development: construction and conversion of the counterparty pipeline across remittance operators, payment service providers, exchanges, marketplaces, aggregators, importers and corporates operating across the cluster's markets.
• Partner selection: identification and contracting of issuers, liquidity providers, market makers, on-ramp and off-ramp partners, and the banks holding the entity's fiat balances.
• Treasury and liquidity: float placement across markets and currencies, pre-funding, rebalancing between the fiat and stablecoin legs, management of foreign exchange exposure and the daily allocation of working capital.
• Operations: reconciliation, break investigation, disputes and chargebacks, incident handling with engineering, customer and partner support, and the operating procedures that evidence each of these to an auditor.
• Unit economics: take rate by corridor, cost per transaction decomposed between network fees, spread, partner share and cost to serve, and the trajectory from first transaction to contribution margin.
• Financial control: budget, forecast and board reporting, prepared with Group Finance and with the Head of Strategy.
• Corridor business cases, with volumes, pricing and margin documented and assumptions sourced.
• Signed agreements with liquidity, ramp and banking partners.
• Operating procedures covering reconciliation, breaks, disputes and incidents.
• Treasury and liquidity policy, including float placement and pre-funding rules.
• Monthly contribution margin analysis by corridor, and the board reporting pack.
• Controlled pilot of end-to-end value movement, followed by first corridor in production.

Education and experience

• Postgraduate qualification (master's level or equivalent) in business, finance, economics or a related discipline.
• Confirmed experience (eight years or more) in payments, remittances, mobile money, correspondent banking or digital assets, of which at least three years in a position carrying a profit and loss account or a corridor target.
• Demonstrable experience taking a cross-border payment or settlement flow from inception to live volume, including nostro and float management, pre-funding, reconciliation and the underlying operating procedures.
• Experience operating in at least one African market with direct exposure to foreign exchange scarcity, soft-currency risk and the practical limits of local banking.

Technical skills

• Negotiation and conclusion of commercial agreements with banks, payment institutions and liquidity providers, and management of those relationships thereafter.
• Working command of stablecoin mechanics as a settlement instrument: issuance and redemption, the characteristics of the principal networks, network and spread cost, and the location of operational risk.
• Financial modelling to the standard required for a business case submitted to a board: volumes, pricing, margin, sensitivity analysis and documented assumptions.
• Design of operating procedures for a regulated entity, including reconciliation, break management, dispute handling and incident escalation.
• Ease in multi-entity and multi-jurisdiction environments, and fluency in English. French at a professional standard is required for the Madagascar, Senegal and WAEMU relationships; Portuguese or Swahili is appreciated.
• Experience standing up the operations of a regulated entity under a new licence, or taking a function through its first external audit or supervisory inspection, is a strong advantage.
• Commercial judgement combined with operational discipline, and the willingness to carry both at once.
• Rigour on figures, and the habit of documenting assumptions and sourcing data.
• Reliability, attention to detail and the capacity to carry several corridors and counterparties in parallel.
• Integrity and discretion appropriate to a regulated entity holding client funds.

Working environment

• A newly created entity within the Pôle Digibank & Fintech, with no existing team, licence or technology estate, and three founding positions to be filled.
• A multi-entity and multi-jurisdiction perimeter, principally Indian Ocean and Africa (Madagascar, Tanzania, Senegal, Togo, Comoros), with the licensing jurisdiction expected in the Gulf or in Pakistan.
• A close working relationship with the Lead, Licensing and the Lead, Engineering, under the Chief Operating Officer of the cluster and alongside the Head of Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions and Fintech Future.
• A distributed team, with approximately one week of travel per month across the cluster's markets, the licensing jurisdiction and Group.