Head of Payments Operations & Onboarding

Black Pen Recruitment; Wes-Kaap; On-site; ZAR 1,200,000 - 2,100,000; Full time

Job summary

Black Pen Recruitment is seeking a Head of Operations for a Cape Town fintech payments business. You will lead merchant onboarding, integrations and customer support, building strong teams and robust controls as the company scales.

The role emphasizes incident management, process improvement and cross-functional collaboration with Product, Tech, Risk and Compliance to ensure reliable payment services and excellent merchant experience.

Qualifications

• A degree in business, operations management, information systems, finance or a related field.
• At least 8 years’ experience in operations, service delivery or call centre environment.
• Experience in payments, banking or another regulated transaction environment is advantageous.
• At least 3 years’ experience managing team leaders or supervisors and a shift environment.
• Proven responsibility for service levels, technical onboarding or implementation, and operational budgets.
• Experience managing major incidents and planning after-hours or continuous support.
• A postgraduate business qualification, ITIL or project management certification would be advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Lead Customer Support, Onboarding and Integrations, ensuring clear accountability and consistent service standards.
• Manage merchant onboarding, system configuration and activation, ensuring approvals and independent checks are completed before merchants go live.
• Oversee plugin and API integrations, testing and readiness to process live payments.
• Manage service levels, escalations and major incident communication, including support for enterprise and whale merchants.
• Work with Product, Technology, Risk, Compliance, Finance and Commercial to resolve issues, address root causes and prevent recurring failures.
• Maintain operational controls, documented procedures and business continuity arrangements, and track audit actions to completion.
• Use workload and transaction data to plan staffing, shift coverage and budgets, and improve efficiency through automation and self-service.
• Recruit, coach and develop team leaders and specialists, building the skills and coverage needed for launch, growth and peak trading.

Skills

Leadership

Payments industry experience

Stakeholder collaboration

Incident management

Team management

Onboarding & onboarding workflows

Education

Bachelor's degree in business / operations management / information systems / finance

Postgraduate business qualification or ITIL/PM certification advantageous

Tools

APIs & webhooks

PCI DSS knowledge

Security/compliance

Job description

Black Pen Recruitment is seeking a Head of Operations for a Cape Town fintech payments business. You will lead merchant onboarding, integrations and customer support, building strong teams and robust controls as the company scales.

The role emphasizes incident management, process improvement and cross-functional collaboration with Product, Tech, Risk and Compliance to ensure reliable payment services and excellent merchant experience.