# Head of Product, Merchant Solutions (SMME) Job Safaricom

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Company: Safaricom

Category: Accounting

Location: Kenya

Work type: Full-time

Work arrangement: On-site

Published: 2026-09-30

Expires: 2026-11-14

## Job Description

IT Jobs, Safaricom Jobs. Head of Product, Merchant Solutions (SMME) leads merchant product strategy, builds scalable SMME payment tools, and drives product adoption, requires a Business or STEM Degree and 10+ years product management experience.

### Responsibilities

- Strategy and roadmap: Define the merchant product vision, segmentation and multi-year roadmap across micro, small and medium merchants, tied to clear commercial outcomes (active merchants, usage, revenue, credit attach).

- Portfolio: Own the full merchant stack: acceptance (till, Buy Goods, Paybill, QR), merchant apps and portals, notifications, reconciliation, business tools and value-added services.

- Activation before build: Prioritise getting merchants to use what already exists before building new. Run structured experiments on onboarding, configuration and engagement, and hold the team to measurable movement.

- Working capital and credit: Partner with financial services to design merchant working-capital and credit journeys that use transaction data well, and fix where the funnel breaks.

- Identity and platform foundations: Drive a single merchant identity and a common data model across products, so every merchant has one view of their business, and every market can reuse what Kenya builds.

- Data and insight: Set the evidence base: define the core merchant metrics and denominators, instrument journeys, and make roadmap decisions from data and merchant research rather than opinion.

- Vendors and delivery: Lead product input into vendor selection and contracts, with particular attention to data rights, IP and reuse across markets. Manage delivery with internal engineering and external partners.

- Team and practice: Build and lead a high-performing product team; set the product operating rhythm (discovery, PRDs, release, post-launch review).

Qualifications

Essential

- 10+ years in product management, with at least 4 years leading product teams or a product portfolio.
Deep experience in mobile money, payments or fintech in Africa, ideally with merchant, SME or agent products at scale.

- A track record of launching and growing products in Kenya or comparable East African markets, with measurable commercial results.

- Strong grasp of merchant payments economics: acceptance, pricing, settlement, reconciliation and merchant lifecycle.

- Data fluency: comfortable defining metrics, working with analysts and SQL outputs, and designing experiments.

- Experience working across complex stakeholder environments (operators, group functions, regulators, partners) and influencing without direct authority.

- Excellent written and verbal communication, including presenting to senior executives.

- Bachelor’s degree in business, economics, engineering, computer science or related field.

Desirable

- Multi-market product experience across several African countries.

- Exposure to SME lending, working capital or data-driven credit products.

- Experience managing third-party technology vendors and commercial contracts.

- Knowledge of Central Bank of Kenya and regional payments and data protection regulation.

- MBA or relevant postgraduate qualification.

### How to Apply

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## Apply

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