Product leadership
Payment infrastructure, pay-in and payout APIs, card acquiring, wallets, DCB, merchant onboarding, settlement, reconciliation, fraud controls, BNPL and cross-border corridors.
Executive résuméUpdated 15 Jul 2026
Product · Program · Payments
RizwanZafar
Product & Program Executive
I build regulated payment infrastructure and the operating systems behind it— turning fragmented rails, risk controls and multi-market delivery into products that scale.
$1B+Annual GTVRegulated payment infrastructure
270M+Payments / yearPlatform throughput
5Live marketsFrontier-market operations
99.95%Settlement SLAControl and reliability
40Engineers ledAcross 12 squads
01 / Career record
Experience
Selected scope, decisions and measurable outcomes.Aug 2020 – PresentSimPaisaChief Product Officer (acting CTO, 2024)Dubai, UAE
Selected mandate
- Owned product strategy and program execution for a regulated multi-rail payments platform spanning pay-in, payouts, wallets, DCB, IBFT, card acquiring, settlement, FX and cross-border corridors.
- Helped scale infrastructure from $0 to $1B+ GTV and 270M+ payments a year, working with leading global PSPs across 5 frontier markets.
- Built merchant onboarding, KYC/KYB, risk-tiering and category pricing flows that cut standard-risk activation from weeks to hours and supported 150+ merchant integrations.
- Led a 40-engineer payments organization across 12 squads; managed $5M+ technology budget, 15+ vendor relationships, PCI DSS, ISO/IEC 27001 and multi-jurisdiction reporting programs.
- Improved platform economics and control: 97% payment success at 90% straight-through processing, 99.95% settlement SLA, fraud loss below 0.1% of GTV and downtime down 90%.
- Deployed three production AI/GenAI solutions across merchant support, incident auto-escalation and partner operations, plus a fraud/AML banking pilot.
Mar 2020 – Aug 2020Daraz (Alibaba Group)Project Manager, Payments OperationsKarachi, Pakistan
Selected mandate
- Ran payment operations governance across five markets during a COVID-driven volume surge, covering settlement cycles, disputes, fraud rules and COD-to-digital conversion.
- Coordinated multi-country reconciliation, vendor management and Alipay localization with Alibaba teams; expanded payment coverage on checkout by ~40%.
Jul 2017 – Mar 2020TapmadSenior Project & Product ManagerKarachi, Pakistan
Selected mandate
- Owned product strategy and program delivery for OTT monetization, subscription billing and payment rails, turning a high-cost billing model into a commercially viable product.
- Launched direct carrier billing across all four major telcos and scaled acquisition from 0 to 5M paid subscribers in under three years.
- Led wallet-billing migration that reduced payment cost from ~50% of revenue to ~1%, improved refund/subscription UX and supported MENA expansion.
Apr 2017 – Oct 2017Wing LogicPMO & Project ManagerDubai, UAE
Selected mandate
- Built a PMO operating model for a $12M+ project portfolio, creating executive dashboards, KPI cadence and delivery governance for 50+ people.
- Reduced project delays by 40% through clearer ownership, reporting rhythm and cross-workstream dependency control.
May 2016 – Jan 2017CIMKO (Nyumba Ya Akiba SA)Assistant Manager, ProjectsDemocratic Republic of the Congo
Selected mandate
- Delivered $8M+ in IT infrastructure and ERP projects in a high-complexity operating environment; reduced project delays by 12% and procurement costs by 15%.
Sep 2012 – Feb 2016DS Engineering ServicesProject Manager, PMOKarachi, Pakistan
Selected mandate
- Managed governance and reporting across 400+ engineering projects and a $15M utilities/power infrastructure portfolio; improved delivery efficiency by 70%.
Jun 2009 – Aug 2012Pakistan Engineering Services Co. (PESCO)Senior Planning EngineerKarachi, Pakistan
Selected mandate
- Built planning and monitoring systems for substation field operations, improving downtime visibility and reducing downtime by 6%.
02 / Evidence
Selected proof
Deep dives for interviewers who want the decisions behind the numbers.01$1B+ regulated payment infrastructureMulti-rail pay-in, payout, wallet, card acquiring, settlement and cross-border infrastructure across five frontier markets.02Merchant onboarding, KYC/KYB and risk controlsActivation cut from weeks to hours with risk-tiered onboarding, sanctions/PEP controls and auditable review flows.03Settlement and reconciliation at scaleCanonical ledger, three-way reconciliation and 99.95% settlement SLA across fragmented rails and partners.04Fraud, AML/CFT and operational riskPayment risk controls, fraud loss below 0.1% of GTV and regulated operating cadence across complex markets.
03 / Leadership system
What I lead
Product judgment, program control and platform accountability in one remit.Program leadership
PMO governance, multi-squad delivery, vendor management, SteerCo reporting, regulatory programs, PCI DSS, ISO 27001 and complex-market execution.
Platform scale
Product and operating systems across fintech, ecommerce and OTT: payment rails, subscription billing, partner ecosystems, risk controls and AI-enabled operations.
Payments Infrastructure
Pay-in / payout APIs · Card acquiring (MPGS/MDES) · Tokenization (DPAN/FPAN, 3DS2) · Wallets, DCB, IBFT · Cross-border corridors & FX · Settlement & reconciliation · ISO 8583 / ISO 20022 / SWIFT · Treasury tooling
AI & Data
GenAI use-case identification & value modeling · RAG architecture & LLM ops in production · AI-driven merchant support & integration bots · Auto-escalation & log-analysis agents · AI fraud detection & AML decisioning · Analytics platforms · decline-code segmentation
Risk & Compliance
KYC / KYB automation · AML / CFT controls · Sanctions & PEP screening · Fraud decisioning & chargebacks · PCI DSS · ISO 27001 · Travel Rule & VARA / FATF alignment
Program & PMO
PMBOK-based stage gates for capital projects · Agile / Scrum / Kanban / hybrid frameworks · RAID logs, SteerCo, board reporting · OKRs, RICE / MoSCoW prioritisation · Vendor & partner negotiation · Programme governance at $1B+ scale
Product & Leadership
Payments product strategy & roadmap · P&L ownership (built from $0) · Org design (40 engineers across 12 squads) · Network & issuer partner enablement · Regulator and central-bank engagement · Pricing, unit economics, ARPU · Go-to-market across 5 regulated frontier markets
Market exposure
UAEKSAPakistanBangladeshSri LankaNepalMyanmarIraqEgyptMENASouth Asia
04 / Foundations
Credentials
Formal qualifications, operating certifications and community leadership.Certifications
- Project Management Professional (PMP), PMI
- PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), PMI
- Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Scrum Alliance
- Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Scrum Alliance
- COBIT 5, IT Governance (ISACA)
- ITIL v3, IT Service Management (Axelos)
Led PCI DSS certification program from scratch (Simpaisa)
Led ISO/IEC 27001 certification program from scratch (Simpaisa)
Education
Aug 2022 – Dec 2022MIT Sloan School of Management
Mastering Design Thinking (Executive Program)
2009 – 2012University of Karachi
M.Sc. Physics
2007 – 2009University of Karachi
B.Sc. Physics
Recognition & contact
Youngest Project Manager of the Year2015
Vice President, VolunteeringPMI Karachi Pakistan Chapter · Jun 2022 – Jun 2023
Director, GovernancePMI Karachi Pakistan Chapter · Jun 2021 – Jul 2022
Senior product & program leadershipDubai · MENA · Global
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