Product Owner - Payments

Product Owner - Payments Location: Dubai, UAE (Hybrid) Team: Product Reports to: About the Role We're looking for a Product Owner to join us and lead our Payments vertical, owning the roadmap, the operations, and the partnerships that let us move money for our users. You'll oversee the roadmap end to end, including day-to-day execution and risk, while understanding the regulatory, legal, and financial landscape of local and cross-border payments. From conception to launch and beyond, you'll collaborate cross-functionally and be the go-to person for this part of the business. If you have the drive to build something from the ground up and never settle, we'd like to hear from you. What You'll Be Doing • Own the Payments vertical roadmap end to end, from ideation through launch and growth • Build payment infrastructure and processes that hold up as we scale • Translate user needs and market opportunity into clear product priorities and specs • Work directly with engineers on technical trade-offs, integration approaches, and delivery • Manage relationships with payment processors, partners, and banking providers • Navigate the regulatory and compliance landscape for cross-border and domestic payments in the UAE and relevant corridors • Define and track product KPIs - transaction success rate, settlement performance, activation, retention • Own reconciliation, settlement, and exception-handling requirements with operations and finance • Partner with Legal, Compliance, and Risk to make sure everything we ship is properly controlled • Use data and user feedback to continuously improve reliability and experience What You'll Need • Minimum 5 years of experience in payments or a related regulated industry • Solid working knowledge of how payments actually work - authorization, settlement, reconciliation, FX, compliance requirements • Experience working directly with payment processors, banks, or payment partners • Comfortable being hands-on - writing specs, talking to engineers, chasing partners, not just managing a roadmap from a distance • Strong analytical skills - you make decisions from data, not assumptions • Excellent written and verbal communication - you'll be explaining this product area to leadership, partners, and regulators alike • Experience shipping products in a regulated environment • A bias toward action - we're small, and we need someone who can build from scratch, not just optimize what exists Nice to Have • Experience with UAE or GCC payment regulations specifically • Exposure to a broad range of payment products - cards, banking, transfers • Experience at an early-stage or high-growth company where you had to build the function, not just run it Show more Show less