Emerging Markets
Emerging markets pressure-test payment products on every dimension: rails, regulation, partner depth, FX and operations. Essays here cover what that pressure teaches.
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Simpaisa Payment Infrastructure Platform
A regulated, multi-rail payments platform processing $1B+ annual GTV and 270M+ payments a year across pay-in, payout, wallets (DCB/IBFT), card acquiring (MPGS/MDES), settlement, FX and cross-border corridors, PCI DSS and ISO/IEC 27001 certified.
Cross-Border Corridors + FX Infrastructure
Cross-border pay-in and payout corridors with FX, partner routing and corridor-level economics.
Daraz (Alibaba Group) Payment Operations + COD-to-Digital Conversion
Ran payment operations for South Asia's largest marketplace across 5 markets during a COVID volume surge. Designed and shipped the COD-to-digital migration as an incentives + trust program — lifted digital share ~40% and cut dispute cycles ~50%.
BNPL Launch at Simpaisa: 0 → 100K Users in 8 Months
Launched Simpaisa's BNPL product from scratch, full underwriting, repayment flows, collections, regulator briefings, to 100K users in 8 months through iterative agile discovery.
SWIFT MT/MX Implementation: ISO 20022 Migration + gpi at Simpaisa
Wired SWIFT MT and MX (ISO 20022) messaging into the Simpaisa cross-border stack with gpi tracking, CSP attestation and dual-rail parsing — sustained 99.9%+ message-acceptance rate through the ISO 20022 migration window.
MPGS Acquirer Integration Programme: Hosted Session, 3DS2, Tokenisation and the Recurring Stack
Took a regional acquirer-processor from a single Hosted Checkout flow to a full MPGS surface, Hosted Session, EMV 3DS2 step-up, scheme tokenisation, recurring billing and dispute ingestion, across a 150+ merchant portfolio in three primary markets without a 24-hour outage.
MDES + VTS Network Tokenisation Rollout: 92% Coverage and the Auth-Rate Lift That Pays For Itself
Migrated 150+ merchants from PAN-on-file to scheme-token credentials across MDES (Mastercard) and VTS (Visa), replaced three vault providers, rewired the recurring engine, and lifted post-tokenisation authorisation rate by 1.8 points portfolio-wide.
3DS2 Step-Up Optimisation: From 38% Frictionless to 73% Without Lifting Fraud
Rebuilt the EMV 3DS2 step-up programme for a regional acquirer-processor — per-issuer risk-based authentication, the full 3DS2 frictionless / data-only path suite, abandon-recovery flows — lifting frictionless rate from 38% to 73% over three quarters while holding portfolio fraud below the 6 bps scheme fraud-monitoring threshold.
Click to Pay (VCTP + MCTP) Programme: Scheme-Led Checkout, Recognised Cardholders, and 7.2pt Conversion Lift
Designed and shipped Click to Pay across a regional acquirer's top-tier merchant cohort, VCTP (Visa Click to Pay) + MCTP (Mastercard Click to Pay), recognised-cardholder enrolment, multi-card wallet, lifting CNP checkout conversion by 7.2 points on the routed traffic.
AML/CFT Sanctions Engine: Real-Time Screening + 60% False-Positive Cut Across Five Markets
Stood up the AML/CFT sanctions and PEP screening engine across six MENA + South Asia markets for a regulated fintech, real-time pre-send blocking + daily batch re-screen, per-corridor list tuning, cut sanctions false-positive rate by ~60% without lowering true-positive coverage.
Regional Wallet Integration: Easypaisa + JazzCash + SADAD + STC Pay Across MENA + South Asia
Integrated the dominant regional wallets, Easypaisa, JazzCash, SADAD, STC Pay, plus Mada-rail acceptance, into a unified payment-acceptance surface for a regional fintech across four markets; produced 27% lift in non-card acceptance and removed three single-rail dependencies.
PMO + Risk Council Operating Model: From Audit-Reactive To Forward-Looking In Two Quarters
Built the joint PMO + Risk Council operating model for a regulated fintech, unified RAID + risk register, monthly council cadence, audit-evidence pipeline, moving the function from audit-reactive to forward-looking, with two regulator commendations and zero new findings across an 18-month cycle.
Daraz (Alibaba Group): +15% Checkout Conversion, −20% False Declines
Rebuilt marketplace checkout and the COD-to-digital migration for Alibaba-group Daraz across five South Asian markets — lifted checkout conversion +15%, cut false declines −20%, and tuned category-aware fraud rules during a COVID volume surge.
Daraz (Alibaba Group): 99.5% Settlement Across Five Markets at Alibaba Scale
Ran multi-country settlement and reconciliation for Alibaba-group Daraz across five South Asian markets — 99.5% settlement accuracy, ~40% wider payment coverage via Alipay and regional-method localisation with the Hangzhou team, and shortened dispute resolution.
Field notes for this hub.
85,000 Amex Locations: The UAE Acceptance Work Starts Now
American Express and Network International can widen UAE acceptance quickly. Sustainable value depends on merchant activation, clean settlement, and repeat card use.
Adyen's UAE License Makes Merchant Acquiring More Local
Adyen's UAE approval is not just expansion news. It changes who controls settlement, compliance loops, and merchant operating reliability.
Revolut and Adyen's UAE Licences Show What Dubai Wants From Fintech
Revolut and Adyen got different UAE licences in June 2026. The shared message is that Dubai wants locally controlled payment operations, not thin market-entry stories.
Lean and Ziina Turn UAE Pay by Bank Into a Checkout Test
Lean and Ziina's UAE one-tap Pay by Bank launch is more than an Open Finance milestone. It is a checkout, trust, settlement, and reconciliation test for account-to-account payments in the Gulf.
Stripe Shows Global Checkout Is a Product System
Stripe found that even one geographically irrelevant payment method can dent conversion. That is the tell: global checkout is a system of localisation, authorisation, fraud, tax, and treasury, not a country toggle.
Finastra's Core Banking Sale Is a Product Focus Lesson
Which product lines actually deserve executive focus? Finastra answered by selling Universal Banking to Pollen Street, and the move is a sharper lesson on platform sprawl than it looks.
Correspondent Banking and the Reality of Emerging-Market Corridors
De-risking did not reduce risk. It moved the risk to the corridors that need access most.
Revolut UAE Licences: The Product Work Starts Now
A UAE payments licence is not the finish line. For a global wallet, it is where the local operating model starts to get tested.
How Emerging Markets Pressure-Test Payment Product Strategy
Cards-first thinking, monthly settlement assumptions, and English-only UX do not survive contact with the markets that will define the next decade of payment volume.
Payment Cost Is a Product Variable: From 50% to 1% (Tapmad Migration Playbook)
Tapmad was losing roughly half its revenue to payment cost. The rail-mix, dunning, and smart-retry rebuild took it to about 1%, past 5M subscribers, and 70% higher ARPU, with no new vendors.
Payments PRD Template: The 9 Sections Every Senior PM Should Write
A payments PRD is not a SaaS feature brief with a money movement appendix. It has to explain state, risk, settlement, compliance and operational failure before engineering starts.
The Risk-Adjusted Backlog: Prioritising Payment Products When Failure Costs Real Money
A payment roadmap cannot be ranked by revenue alone. The backlog has to price the cost of failure, the cost of delay and the cost of operating complexity.
CSPO + RICE in Practice: A Real Payments Roadmap Walkthrough
RICE is a clean ranking framework that does not know payments exists. CSPO is a clean product mindset that does not know prioritisation maths. Put together, with a risk-adjusted overlay, they become a working operating system for a payments backlog. Here is the walkthrough.
Hiring Fintech PMs: Twelve Interview Questions That Actually Separate Senior From Junior
Most fintech PM interviews still draw from the same SaaS-PM rubric the candidate practiced for. The questions that actually separate senior from junior are the ones that cannot be prepared for from a YouTube series. These are twelve I have used to hire payments product managers, with what each one tests and what the answers reveal.
MENA + South Asia Payment Infrastructure: A Country-By-Country Operating Map
Every operator entering MENA or South Asia gets a market deck from the local consulting partner. The deck is well-presented and operationally useless. This is the deck that would actually have helped, the regulators, the rails, the wallets, the flows that matter, and the launch sequence that does not collapse.
Nigerian Payment Rails: NIBSS, NQR, eNaira: How the Stack Actually Works
Nigeria has built one of the most ambitious public-rail payment stacks of any emerging market: NIBSS, NIP, BVN, NQR, eNaira, all interlinked under the CBN. Anyone entering Nigeria gets a stack deeper than the deck suggests and a regulator more active than they expect.
OKRs at $1B+ TPV: How Payment Goals Differ From SaaS Goals
SaaS OKRs measure user behaviour and revenue growth. Payments OKRs measure money behaviour and risk posture, and the two operate on opposite reflexes. Here is what a senior payments leader actually writes when the platform is clearing a billion.
Payments PM Career Ladder: IC → Lead → Director → VP: What Actually Changes At Each Step
Most career ladders treat the levels as steps on a staircase. Payments is different, each level requires unlearning what worked at the previous one. This is the operator's map of what changes between IC, Lead, Director, and VP in a payments product organisation.
Product Management for Payments Platforms: What's Different, and What's Not
A payments PM is a SaaS PM with three extra constituencies and one extra reflex. Get the reflex wrong and the other constituencies stop trusting you.
Crypto Off-Ramps in Emerging Markets: The Real Plumbing
An off-ramp is only as good as the local payout rail underneath it. In emerging markets, that rail is the hardest, most fragile part of the entire crypto stack.