Visa Direct Business Development Director

Company Description

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Make an impact with a purpose-driven industry leader. Join us today and experience Life at Visa.

Job Description

The role holder leads the Visa Direct platform and commercialization responsibilities for Sub Saharan Africa across all use cases. Responsibilities cover the complete span - sizing the opportunity, thinking through and building the push payment strategy in line with the country’s business objectives, identifying use cases, engaging internal and external stakeholders to deploy Visa Direct solutions. Key focus of the role is product and platform development with further deployment with responsibility from business requirements drafting to quality assurance and project management/coordination with multiple internal distributed teams. These new solutions have to be deployed keeping in mind the evolving market, client and consumer needs with the objective of driving significant future market growth for Visa in emerging markets. The role holder must possess a unique blend of commercialization and business analysis skills as well have intimate understanding of payments, mobile technology, consumer behavior and Visa’s business. The role will work cross functionally with other functional teams in the markets and co-ordinate the product roadmap and learnings from the wider regional Visa Direct teams.

Solution Development and Deployment. Be a thought leader and influencer in developing and deploying the solution in the market. The role holder has to manage the full cycle of Visa Direct solutions deployment - articulation of the solutions value proposition for internal and external stakeholders, mapping the value chain, working on commercials and solution deployment, testing the plans with key internal and external partners and institute program management for effective deployment and tracking of the agreed plan.

Go-to-market plans. Success of new solutions/platforms requires seamless execution based on carefully design market plans. This role leads in defining market plans for Visa Direct with specific focus on defined target markets and solutions.

Business Analysis and Project Management. New solution rollout has complexities involving multiple stake holders and the projects have tight deadlines and executive accountability associated with it. Role holder will lead product interrelated project tasks and associated deadlines to ensure that they are met.

Product and Platform design. Recommend and develop product and platform design improvements relevant for Sub Saharan Africa. As subject matter expert, the role requires developing the knowledge base on these new solutions and customizing them for the local markets and developing industry best practices that can leveraged by local teams in many markets worldwide. Translate specific market needs and feed that that into the global platform development roadmap.

Partner Management and building local accelerator partners. The role holder provides thought leadership to identify target accelerator partners, co-ordinate with partnership teams to sell-in the solution and manage these partners to deployment.

 

This is a hybrid position. Expectation of days in office will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.

Qualifications

Professional
1. 10+ years’ work experience – prior experience in taking new products from the idea stage to commercial launch is preferred.
2. Business degree and Technical education and background is advantageous.
3. Project Management ad Business Analysis experience is strongly preferred.
4. Extremely high value on direct exposure to digital payment solutions (mobile banking, payment cards, mobile money, ISO 20022, RTP, API-based platforms, payments’ overlay services).
5. Experience of working on digital solutions in the FI or Technology space.
6. Fluency in English is required
Technical
1. Understanding of the Domestic and Cross Border Payments, Visa systems, Banking and Financial services, its platforms and commercial models, including ISO 20022 standard and Real Time Payments operating models.
2. Knowledge of payment and mobile technology, as well as overlay services for payments and its impact on emerging business models
3. Knowledge of Consumer behavior especially in a digital environment.
4. Knowledge of retail and its structure in emerging market
Business
1. Excellent inter-personal/ client management skills
2. Good analytical and organizational skills
3. Willingness and ability to work in unstructured and informal settings with sophisticated clients and/or partners
4. Proven negotiation skills
5. Solid communication skills – both written and spoken
6. Driven, self-starter
7. Culturally adaptable

Additional Information

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.

Client-provided location(s): Johannesburg, South Africa

Job ID: a8abaf91-5ca1-411e-9743-61b0f491459d

Employment Type: OTHER

Posted: 2025-07-31T09:26:47