Business Unit Chief Financial Officer, Payment Processing Services

The mandate

A payment processing services unit is increasing merchant volumes and adding commercial partnerships, but its finance leadership still combines unit profitability with settlement coordination. The board wants a dedicated business-unit CFO who can distinguish funds owed to others from earned fee income and genuine operating liquidity. That distinction becomes more important as exceptions, refunds and partner arrangements increase the complexity of the transaction record.

The role is permanent with open-ended employment, beginning with a twelve-month agenda to strengthen settlement finance, fee economics and unit decision controls. It is a bounded operating-unit seat supported by the platform CFO and qualified compliance specialists. The leader will work directly with reconciliation staff and commercial teams, building practical financial ownership rather than relying on a group report to reveal problems after merchant or banking relationships have been affected.

Transaction value is not revenue, and settlement balances are not a convenient source of working capital. The finance model must recognise the processing service actually sold, the fee and cost evidence attached to it and the conditions governing refunds or adjustments. Banking and compliance owners determine applicable operating requirements; finance ensures approved arrangements are reflected in the records and that material exceptions receive accountable investigation.

The CFO controls unit finance operations, margin analysis and operating cash recommendations within delegation. New partner structures, material settlement-control exceptions and commitments beyond the approved budget require authorised executive review. The role cannot unilaterally change safeguarding or compliance conditions, approve merchant risk policy or use customer-related funds to finance the unit. Commercial growth must remain consistent with a controlled financial and operational perimeter.

Within the first year, executives should be able to trace significant fee, cost and settlement movements through reconciled transaction evidence. Pricing decisions should reveal the cost of exceptions and service obligations, while cash views should exclude resources unavailable for operating use. Continuing CFO leadership develops the team and maintains those controls as partnerships and processing propositions evolve, without treating initial reconciliation repair as the end of financial accountability.

What you will own

• Establish separate operating liquidity and settlement obligation views, reconciling their boundaries to approved banking arrangements so management cannot confuse transaction balances with resources available for unit expenditure.
• Decide the finance evidence required for processing pricing proposals, including transaction mix, exception handling and partner costs that determine whether a headline fee creates sustainable operating margin.
• Govern the reconciliation exception register with age, value and accountable investigation ownership, requiring material unresolved items to reach the designated review route before they distort fee or cash reporting.
• Build refund and adjustment financial controls with operating owners, documenting the approved decision evidence and reconciliation consequences without assuming authority over merchant risk or compliance policy.
• Challenge partnership growth cases through realistic service and transaction-cost scenarios, identifying arrangements whose economics depend on volumes or exception rates unsupported by the available operating record.
• Develop finance and reconciliation leaders through sampled transaction investigations, strengthening their ability to distinguish timing differences, data defects and obligations requiring executive or specialist escalation.
• Present a monthly unit finance paper connecting earned revenue, operating cost and unresolved settlement evidence, allowing the platform CFO to judge growth quality beyond transaction volume and gross processing value.

Candidate qualifications

• Senior finance responsibility in payment processing, fintech infrastructure or a related transaction services business is required, with at least seven years of relevant career experience. Demonstrate personally led work on unit economics or settlement-related financial controls and explain how your leadership went beyond consolidation of processing value or routine reconciliation status.
• Candidates must be able to distinguish fee revenue, transaction obligations and operating liquidity through actual records. Describe a balance that appeared available or earned but required different treatment after investigation, including the banking, accounting or compliance owners consulted. Technical judgement should be supported by a recognised professional finance qualification and an understanding of the limits of the CFO's delegated authority.
• Experience should include commercial pricing or partner-finance analysis that incorporated exception handling, refunds or transaction mix. Show how source evidence changed a profitability conclusion and what operating decision followed. A growth forecast alone is not sufficient: applicants must demonstrate the reconciliation and cost methods that made the proposed economics credible under adverse or imperfect transaction conditions.
• Effective leadership requires developing a small specialist team and challenging commercial colleagues without compromising operating cooperation. Provide a material exception you escalated, the approval route used and the action that improved the continuing control. Applicants should be comfortable with hands-on review, transparent residual issues and working alongside platform finance and independent compliance functions.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 14 October 2026. Mandate reference CVU-PER-2026-IND-207.