Senior Analyst - Acceptance Solutions

About Visa

Visa leads the global payments technology landscape, facilitating secure transactions for consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and governments across over 200 countries and territories. The organization is dedicated to empowering individuals worldwide by offering the best methods to pay and get paid.

At Visa, employees have the chance to make a meaningful impact through challenging work, skill enhancement, and contributions that positively affect global communities.

Role Summary

The Acceptance Solutions team within Value-Added Services (VAS) drives the growth of acceptance products across the Central, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa (CEMEA) region. This senior analyst position leads Visa's strategy and operational execution for acceptance localization focused on card-present payments, domestic payment schemes, regulatory compliance, and market-specific requirements.

The role requires extensive collaboration with regulators, financial institutions, acquirers, processors, merchants, and internal stakeholders to ensure Visa’s in-person payment acceptance capabilities meet local demands and evolving industry needs. The position involves partnership with product, technology, legal, compliance, and government affairs teams to assess, define, and implement localization initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as the subject matter expert for in-person payment acceptance localization across the CEMEA region, encompassing merchant acquiring, acceptance infrastructure, domestic payment schemes, and local routing projects.
• Develop and lead strategy that addresses regulatory requirements, domestic scheme mandates, and national infrastructure initiatives.
• Translate complex regulatory, market, and scheme needs into detailed business, operational, and technical specifications.
• Engage with regulators, central banks, national payment entities, and government partners to track ecosystem changes and represent Visa’s acceptance capabilities.
• Collaborate with government engagement, legal, risk, compliance, and product teams to evaluate impact and shape Visa’s response strategies.
• Partner closely with global product, technology, and processing teams to prioritize market demands, support product roadmaps, and build business cases.
• Work with VisaNet, core, and network processing teams to review technical impacts and support scalable solution deployments.
• Lead comprehensive execution of localization projects including requirement gathering, impact analysis, stakeholder coordination, delivery oversight, testing, certification, and market preparation.
• Support initiatives for domestic scheme enablement, such as co-badging, local routing, mandates, and infrastructure modernization.
• Assess readiness of acquiring, processing, and acceptance ecosystems for localized payment conditions.
• Interface with acquirers, processors, PSPs, vendors, merchants, fintech firms, and ecosystem participants to address deployment challenges.
• Identify product gaps and local customization needs, collaborating with global teams for prioritization and resolution.
• Create market and regulatory assessments with strategic recommendations and senior leadership updates.
• Manage annual planning for localization projects, including setting KPIs, priorities, and cross-functional alignment.
• Monitor and communicate project status, risks, and dependencies to senior leaders.
• Represent Visa in industry forums, regulatory discussions, market groups, and client meetings related to payment acceptance and localization.

Work Location

This role is based onsite in Riyadh Region with an expectation to work from the office at least three days per week; specific days will be coordinated with the hiring manager.

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, Finance, or related disciplines.
• Minimum five years’ experience within payments, merchant acquiring, card-present acceptance, payment processing, fintech, or associated sectors.
• Comprehensive expertise in merchant acquiring, payment acceptance ecosystems, and card-present processing methods.
• Demonstrated collaboration with financial institutions, acquirers, processors, PSPs, merchants, fintech companies, payment networks, or national payment organizations.
• Strong knowledge of card-present payments technologies including EMV chip, contactless, NFC, SoftPOS, Android POS, unattended commerce, transit, mobile wallets, and QR-code acceptance.
• In-depth understanding of payment processing life cycles such as authorization, clearing, settlement, routing, switching, and acquiring architectures.
• Familiarity with payment standards and technologies like ISO 8583, EMV specifications, contactless frameworks, tokenization, terminal certification, and network routing models.
• Experience supporting payment localization, domestic schemes, routing mandates, regulatory projects, or national payment infrastructure upgrades.
• Extensive knowledge of payment ecosystems within GCC and wider CEMEA markets, including domestic schemes and regulatory frameworks.
• Engagement experience with regulators, central banks, or government stakeholders preferred.
• Awareness of prominent acquiring and processing platforms such as OpenWay, BPC, Compass Plus, ACI, or Fiserv is favorable.
• Skill in converting market demands into product, technology, and operational solutions.
• Proven track record leading complex, multi-stakeholder projects involving business, technology, legal, regulatory, and external parties.
• Strong commercial insight with capacity to develop business cases and strategic advice.
• Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and program management capabilities.
• Effective communicator capable of articulating complex technical and business topics to diverse audiences.
• Ability to manage several strategic initiatives concurrently in a fast-moving and matrixed environment.
• Advanced stakeholder management and influence skills to work with executives, clients, regulators, and industry partners.
• Proficient in Microsoft PowerPoint and Excel to support strategic development, business cases, and executive reporting.
• Fluent oral and written communication skills in English and Arabic.
• Willingness to travel within GCC and CEMEA regions as needed.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Visa is committed to providing equal employment opportunities without discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, veteran status, or criminal history consistent with legal guidelines.