Sr. Analyst

Role Overview

Sr. Analyst at Visa, based in the CEMEA region (Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa). This role leads Visa's acceptance localization strategy and execution across the region, serving as the subject matter expert for in-person acceptance capabilities aligned with local market, regulatory, and domestic payment scheme requirements.

Company Overview

Visa is a world leader in payments technology, facilitating transactions between consumers, merchants, financial institutions and government entities across more than 200 countries and territories. The Acceptance Solutions team is part of the Value-Added Services (VAS) organization and is responsible for enabling and growing acceptance products and services across the CEMEA region.

Role Purpose

Lead the identification, prioritization, and delivery of localization requirements necessary to support domestic payment schemes, national payment infrastructure initiatives, local routing mandates, regulatory requirements, and market-specific acceptance needs across CEMEA. Partner with regulators, national payment companies, financial institutions, acquirers, processors, merchants, and internal Visa stakeholders to ensure Visa's in-person acceptance capabilities support local market requirements and evolving payment ecosystem needs.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Market Assessment

• Lead Visa's regional strategy for localization of in-person acceptance capabilities to address regulatory requirements, domestic payment scheme mandates, and national payment infrastructure initiatives.
• Develop regional localization strategies and market assessments to support regional and global decision-making.
• Develop market assessments, strategy recommendations, and executive-level updates to support senior decision-making.
• Analyze and translate regulatory, market, and domestic scheme requirements into clearly documented business, operational, and technical requirements.
• Demonstrate ability to translate market requirements into product, technology, and operational deliverables.

Stakeholder Engagement & Partnership

• Partner with regulators, central banks, national payment companies, and government stakeholders to understand evolving payment ecosystem requirements and represent Visa's acceptance capabilities.
• Work closely with Government Engagement, Legal, Risk, Compliance, and Regional Product teams to assess the impact of local payment requirements and define Visa's response strategy.
• Collaborate with Global Product, Technology, Acceptance Solutions, and Core Processing teams to build business cases, prioritize market requirements, and drive product roadmap enhancements.
• Partner with VisaNet, network processing, and core processing teams to evaluate technical implications of localization initiatives and identify scalable implementation approaches.
• Engage with acquirers, processors, payment service providers (PSPs), payment facilitators, terminal vendors, merchants, fintechs, and ecosystem participants to understand implementation challenges and support deployment readiness.
• Represent Visa at industry forums, regulatory discussions, market working groups, and client engagements related to payment acceptance, domestic schemes, and localization initiatives.

Subject Matter Expertise

• Serve as the Subject Matter Expert (SME) for in-person acceptance localization across CEMEA, covering merchant acquiring, acceptance infrastructure, card-present payments, domestic payment schemes, and local routing initiatives.
• Identify product gaps and regional customization requirements and work with global teams to prioritize and deliver solutions addressing local market needs.
• Assess acquiring, processing, and acceptance ecosystem readiness to support market-specific payment requirements.

Program Execution & Delivery

• Drive end-to-end execution of localization initiatives including requirements gathering, impact assessments, stakeholder alignment, business case development, delivery tracking, testing, certification support, and market readiness activities.
• Support domestic payment scheme enablement initiatives, including co-badging programs, local routing, domestic acceptance mandates, and national payment infrastructure projects.
• Monitor progress of localization programs and provide regular updates to senior leadership on market readiness, implementation status, risks, and dependencies.

Planning & Governance

• Be responsible for annual planning activities for localization initiatives, including KPI setting, strategic priorities, delivery objectives, and cross-functional alignment.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, Finance, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in payments, merchant acquiring, card-present acceptance, payment processing, fintech, or related industries.
• Deep expertise in merchant acquiring, payment acceptance ecosystems, and card-present payment processing.
• Proven experience working with financial institutions, acquirers, processors, payment service providers, merchants, fintechs, payment networks, or national payment organizations.
• Demonstrated experience supporting payment localization initiatives, domestic payment schemes, local routing programs, regulatory projects, or national payment infrastructure modernization efforts.
• Strong understanding of the payments landscape across GCC and broader CEMEA markets, including domestic schemes, regulatory frameworks, national payment infrastructure, and local routing requirements.
• Experience working with regulators, central banks, national payment companies, or government stakeholders is strongly preferred.

Skills & Competencies

Payment Technologies & Standards

• Strong knowledge of card-present payments, including EMV chip acceptance, contactless payments, NFC technologies, SoftPOS / Tap-to-Phone, Android POS, unattended commerce, transit acceptance, mobile wallet acceptance, and QR-based acceptance solutions.
• Strong understanding of payment processing and transaction lifecycles, including authorization, clearing, settlement, routing, switching, and acquiring architectures.
• Working knowledge of payment technologies and standards including ISO 8583, EMV specifications, contactless frameworks, tokenization concepts, terminal certification processes, and network routing models.

Technical & Systems Knowledge

• Familiarity with leading acquiring and payment processing platforms such as OpenWay, BPC, Compass Plus, ACI, Fiserv, or equivalent solutions is strongly preferred.

Business & Analytical

• Strong business acumen and ability to develop business cases and strategic recommendations.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and program management skills.
• Demonstrated ability to drive complex cross-functional programs involving business, product, technology, legal, regulatory, and external stakeholders.
• Excellent PowerPoint and Excel skills to support strategy development, business cases, executive communications, and market assessments.

Communication & Stakeholder Management

• Ability to communicate complex technical and business concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to engage senior executives, clients, regulators, and industry partners.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in both English and Arabic.
• Ability to manage multiple strategic initiatives in a fast-paced and highly matrixed environment.

Additional Information

• Visa requires at least 3 days in office; specific expectations will be confirmed by your Hiring Manager.
• Ability to travel across GCC and CEMEA markets as required.
• 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.