Consulting commission
The institution seeks a payments leader to define how it should expand its business-to-business payments franchise using its existing relationships, capabilities and infrastructure. The assignment should connect customer payment needs with a practical proposition across collections, payables, reconciliation, account services and business systems integration.
The consultant must avoid equating payment volume with profitable growth. The roadmap should show which customer problems are worth solving, how the institution will acquire and activate those customers, what operating responsibilities it accepts, and how it earns collected contribution after processing, liquidity, risk, support and technology costs.
This is a non-statutory consulting role. The consultant does not execute payment instructions, commit the institution to products or counterparties, negotiate binding contracts without authority, or assume the responsibilities of management, compliance or audit.
Month one — identify the expansion opportunity
Map existing customers, products, corridors, channels, transaction patterns, account relationships and partner arrangements. Review sales losses, inactive contracts, operational complaints, pricing exceptions and customer workarounds. Distinguish customers by the problem they need solved: cash application, supplier payment, approval, collections visibility, multi-entity control, reconciliation or integration.
The first output will be a market-and-customer baseline grounded in the institution's actual capability. Potential segments should be evaluated for demand, acquisition access, sales cycle, integration burden, payment behaviour, liability and margin—not selected because they appear fashionable in the payments market.
Month two — shape the proposition
Translate priority needs into product and service choices. Assess account-linked collections, virtual or reference-based reconciliation, bulk payables, approval controls, supplier settlement, recurring business payments and APIs where appropriate. Explain whether the institution acts as account provider, processor, coordinator, agent or another participant in each flow.
The proposition must specify the customer's authorised users, funding, payment status, failure handling, reconciliation, dispute process, service limits and human support. Optional financial features require separate risk and legal evaluation; they must not enter the roadmap as incidental enhancements to a payment journey.
Month three — test economics and operating feasibility
Build segment and customer economics after transaction charges, interchange or partner income where relevant, discounts, onboarding, integration, support, fraud, disputes, liquidity, treasury and infrastructure. Separate corporate benefit from money or balances held for customers.
Trace instruction to authorisation, screening, processing, clearing, settlement, refund and reconciliation. Identify dependencies on legacy systems, partners, cut-offs and manual intervention. Model pricing under actual transaction mix, lower-than-forecast activation and a service incident. The Board should see why a proposition remains attractive without optimistic cross-selling assumptions.
Month four — define distribution and partnerships
Design acquisition through relationship teams, treasury specialists, enterprise-system channels and selected partners. Clarify opportunity ownership, referral economics, customer onboarding, technical presales, activation and post-sale service. A signed contract should not count as an active payments relationship until the agreed usage and collection criteria are met.
Evaluate build, buy and partner options against capability, security, control, service reliability, commercial dependence and exit. Partner recommendations must include diligence, data and money flows, liability, audit rights, incident notification, pricing change and migration. The consultant must disclose any personal or commercial connection before evaluating a party.
Month five — validate selected journeys
Prepare controlled validation with representative customers and transactions. Test integration, user permissions, bank-detail changes, duplicate or failed instructions, insufficient funding, customer disputes, reconciliation and support handoffs. Production activity, if approved, remains under institutional authority and existing controls.
Record customer value, operational effort, activation friction, transaction accuracy, collected revenue and unresolved exceptions. The consultant should recommend redesign or cessation when the evidence contradicts the commercial thesis. Demonstrations and letters of interest are not substitutes for operating proof.
Month six — submit the execution roadmap
Deliver a sequenced expansion plan with product choices, target segments, pricing, distribution, partnership decisions, capability gaps, investment, owners, dependencies and risk gates. Include a base case, downside case and actions required if activation or contribution underperforms.
The handover should define the next twelve to eighteen months of execution without promising outcomes outside the institution's control. Management must know which work can begin immediately, which requires approval and which is blocked by foundational capability. Establish a review cadence for realised customer value and financial return.
Acceptance criteria
The roadmap will be judged by its traceability from customer need to proposition, operating design, economics and accountable delivery. The institution should receive a segment scorecard, proposition catalogue, payment-flow maps, unit-economics model, partner assessment, validation evidence and execution plan.
Performance measures should distinguish customers contracted, activated and generating collected contribution. Include payment success, settlement and reconciliation exceptions, support effort, fraud and dispute cost, customer concentration, liquidity implications and adoption across relevant workflows.
Consultant profile
Candidates should have at least 22 years of experience across corporate or transaction banking, B2B payments, cash management, payments products, enterprise platforms, treasury services or commercial expansion. Former payments-business heads, transaction-bank leaders, product executives and senior operating consultants may be suitable.
Strong candidates will demonstrate a franchise expansion they helped execute, a pricing or partnership decision grounded in full economics, and experience resolving difficult payment or integration failures in a legacy environment.
IICA registration is not required. The consultant must disclose relationships with payment providers, enterprise-software businesses, banks, cloud vendors, investors or prospective partners. No undisclosed referral, contingent or connected-party benefit may influence advice. The engagement is complete when the institution can execute and govern the roadmap without the consultant becoming its permanent operating dependency.