Interim Chief Executive Officer — Payments Licence Remediation

The mandate

The regulator restricted new merchant onboarding after repeated exceptions in escrow reconciliation, grievance closure and outsourced-agent oversight, and the board removed the CEO. The institution needs an executive who can preserve daily settlement, make unpopular volume decisions and represent a credible remediation posture immediately.

The interim must commence within ten days and is expected to hold office for twelve months, subject to required fit-and-proper clearance. The board will begin a permanent search after the first regulatory checkpoint, with extension possible only if restrictions or approval timing prevent the planned eight-week transition.

The handover condition is formal lifting or board-accepted resolution of the operating restriction, ninety days of clean escrow and settlement evidence, complaints within prescribed ageing, agent controls independently tested and a permanent CEO who has led one regulatory review. Revenue recovery without these facts will not close the mandate.

The interim may throttle onboarding, suspend agents, direct the approved ₹30 crore remediation budget and replace temporary programme leadership. Changes to customer funds architecture, capital raising, acquisitions, permanent C-suite appointments, aggregate redress above ₹25 crore and commercial commitments exceeding ₹50 crore require board approval.

International expansion, unrelated consumer-credit products and a corporate rebrand are explicitly excluded. The interim will not revisit shareholder arrangements or lead a sale process while licence conditions remain the primary concern.

Why this seat is open

The board concluded that the prior executive chain could not credibly attest to controls it had repeatedly waived. A deputy appointment would blur accountability during a regulator-facing recovery. The company needs a temporary chief with institutional authority, payments judgement and no attachment to historic growth decisions.

What you will own

• Set the daily operating posture for onboarding, settlements, escrow funding, grievances and agent activity against licence conditions.
• Sign the remediation plan and require each closure assertion to link to tested evidence, accountable ownership and sustained operation.
• Decide which merchant cohorts or agent channels remain restricted until customer-funds and conduct controls meet threshold.
• Reconstitute executive governance with recorded challenge, escalation clocks and direct visibility for independent control functions.
• Negotiate realistic supervisory checkpoints and communicate misses without recasting unfinished work as closure.
• Prove operating recovery through ninety days of reconciliations, sampled grievances and independent outsourced-agent tests.
• Transfer regulatory commitments, decision logs, capital needs, executive assessments and the next six-month plan to the permanent CEO.

Candidate qualifications

• Served as CEO, managing director or enterprise COO of a regulated payments, banking or financial-market institution.
• Led a licence, consent-order or supervisory remediation while maintaining critical customer-funds operations.
• Held direct accountability for settlement, escrow or safeguarding controls at substantial transaction scale.
• Faced a regulator and board after control failure with evidence-led, candid communication.
• Made channel or customer-growth restrictions despite near-term revenue consequence.
• Has completed fit-and-proper processes and executive succession in an Indian regulated entity.

Non-negotiables

• Available for full-time Mumbai leadership within ten days, subject only to regulatory clearance.
• No present ownership, directorship or advisory engagement with a competing payment operator or sponsor bank.
• Will not subordinate Risk, Compliance or Internal Audit to commercial recovery targets.
• Must accept board-reserved authority over capital, permanent executives and material customer redress.

1. 49 words maximum. State your earliest start, fit-and-proper history and any payments-sector conflict.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a regulatory restriction you helped remove and the sustained evidence required.
3. 49 words maximum. When have you deliberately reduced transaction growth to protect a licence condition?