Product Owner – Card Payments & Payment Gateway - Claremont at Datafin Recruitment

ENVIRONMENT

• Our client is a scale-up fintech with a start-up mindset, combining the agility and innovation of a startup with the stability of an established payments business. They are building world-class card payment solutions for South Africa and need a Product Owner with deep card payments expertise to own this critical domain.
• You will own the card payments domain end-to-end, translating complex banking and scheme requirements into scalable, merchant-ready payment solutions. This is a hands-on role for someone who has implemented payment gateways or card payment solutions before, either within a gateway, fintech, or banking environment.

DUTIES

Product Ownership & Strategy

• Own the card payments and payment gateway roadmap, balancing business objectives, regulatory requirements, and technical constraints.
• Define and prioritise features for online card acceptance, transaction flows, security, and performance.
• Act as the primary payments SME for stakeholders across Product, Engineering, Risk, Finance, and Operations.

Business Analysis & Delivery

• Analyse and define detailed requirements for new and enhanced card payment functionality.
• Map and optimise end-to-end card payment flows including authorisation, settlement, reconciliation, 3D Secure, tokenisation, refunds, and chargebacks.
• Translate business and banking requirements into clear user stories, functional specifications, and acceptance criteria.
• Support delivery teams across the full SDLC — from discovery and refinement through to UAT and production rollout.

Payments & Banking Alignment

• Ensure solutions comply with South African acquiring requirements, scheme mandates (Visa / Mastercard), PASA rules, and regulatory standards.
• Collaborate with banks, processors, and third-party providers on integrations and compliance.
• Partner with merchants and internal teams to explain payment flows, troubleshoot issues, and improve transaction success rates.

REQUIREMENTS

Must-Have Experience

• Proven experience working within a payment gateway, fintech, or bank on card payment solutions.

Strong understanding of:

• Card-not-present payment processing
• Payment gateway integrations
• Card rails and banking requirements
• 3D Secure (1 & 2), tokenisation, card vaulting
• Settlement, reconciliation, refunds, and chargebacks
• Fraud prevention and transaction risk analysis
• Experience with API-driven payment platforms and technical integrations.

Product & BA Skillset

• Experience in a Product Owner or Senior BA capacity, owning features or domains.
• Strong business analysis fundamentals: requirements gathering, process mapping, user stories, and UAT.
• Comfortable in Agile environments using tools such as Jira, Confluence, Miro, Swagger/OpenAPI.

Nice to Have

• Banking or acquiring experience with direct exposure to card rails.
• High-volume transaction platform or fintech experience.

ATTRIBUTES

• Strong communicator bridging technical, business, and banking stakeholders.
• Detail-oriented with a systems-thinking mindset.
• Confident owning a specialised domain while collaborating within a broader product and BA team.
• Passionate about building reliable, compliant, and scalable payment experiences.