Group Chief Financial Officer — Payments Portfolio

The mandate

A high-growth payments portfolio is separating finance from a broader shared-services structure after a conduct review exposed weaknesses in merchant economics, fee disclosure and ownership of remediation costs. Volume growth has masked the extent to which chargebacks, incentives, fraud losses, manual operations and partner rebates vary by cohort. The board wants a Group Chief Financial Officer who can give the business an independent financial spine while ensuring that customer redress and control repair are funded, tracked and completed.

The scope covers an asset and investment perimeter of approximately ₹3,750 crore, a finance community and associated partners of about 180 people, and relationships across acquiring, gateway services, payment aggregation and selected value-added products. The role is not limited to reporting. It owns the economic architecture that links merchant contracts, transaction revenues, network costs, fraud, settlement exposure and operational service. It will also shape capital allocation and funding for the next investment cycle.

The immediate task is to distinguish profitable growth from volume purchased through opaque concessions. Current management information aggregates merchant segments that carry very different loss, service and capital characteristics. Remediation provisions sit across several entities, while commercial forecasts assume benefits from products whose delivery dates have moved. The incoming CFO must establish one version of the economics without paralysing a franchise that still has attractive growth opportunities.

As a new executive seat, this appointment has permission to redesign finance around decisions rather than inherited legal entities. It will bring controllership, commercial finance, treasury, tax, procurement and finance data under coherent leadership, while maintaining productive challenge with risk, compliance and internal audit.

Why this seat is open

The company has classified the hire as urgent and new. A recent thematic review required the board to create explicit executive ownership for the payments portfolio’s financial statements, remediation provision and investment case. Previously, these responsibilities were divided between group finance, product finance and operating entities. That division now creates unacceptable ambiguity. A temporary steering committee can authorise near-term redress and control expenditure, but it cannot sign the multi-year choices due in the next planning round.

What you will own

• Produce a transaction-to-ledger profitability model that attributes network charges, incentives, fraud, chargebacks, service labour and funding cost to merchant cohorts and products.
• Establish the complete remediation financial envelope, including customer or merchant redress, external assurance, technology repair, legal contingencies and operational capacity.
• Rebuild the rolling forecast so that transaction volume, take rate, loss behaviour, product release dates and cash consequences reconcile through a transparent set of drivers.
• Review the legal-entity and settlement architecture, daily liquidity buffers, safeguarded funds and counterparty concentrations; escalate any economic reliance on operational tolerance.
• Reset investment governance for new payment products, requiring observable adoption, unit economics, control readiness and stop criteria before capital progresses between stages.
• Lead statutory and management reporting, treasury, tax, controllership, procurement and finance transformation across the portfolio, with accountable owners for data lineage and manual adjustments.
• Partner with commercial leadership on merchant pricing and contract renewals without allowing headline volume to obscure loss-making concessions.
• Give the audit and risk committees an unvarnished view of remediation spend, provision sensitivity and residual exposure, including scenarios management would prefer not to realise.

The first 12 months

In the opening 45 days, reconcile the remediation population, provision assumptions and cash calendar. Review the twenty merchant cohorts contributing the greatest gap between gross and risk-adjusted margin. Confirm who may approve pricing, incentive and settlement exceptions, and suspend any authority that cannot be evidenced. The audit committee should receive a concise statement of known, estimated and genuinely unknown exposure.

By day 90, deliver a forecast bridge from transaction volume to EBITDA, operating cash and regulatory liquidity. It should identify the sensitivity to take-rate compression, network-fee changes, fraud losses and delayed product releases. At the same point, propose the permanent finance organisation, identify material skill gaps, and agree the data fixes needed to reduce spreadsheet-based reconciliations.

Between months four and eight, embed cohort economics into commercial reviews, renegotiate the least defensible arrangements and place all remediation expenditure under benefits and closure governance. Introduce investment stage gates for the next product cycle. The CFO should also test whether entity structure, transfer pricing and treasury arrangements remain fit for the portfolio’s scale.

The year-end evidence should include a close shortened by at least three working days; forecast variance within 7% for revenue, cash and remediation expenditure over two consecutive quarters; 95% of material merchant cohorts covered by fully loaded economics; a board-approved capital and liquidity plan; and independently validated closure of the highest-risk finance actions. Remediation must not be declared complete merely because the spend has occurred.

What the board will measure

• Accuracy and stability of the remediation provision, with changes traceable to new evidence rather than weak baseline construction.
• Improvement in contribution margin for cohorts addressed through repricing, service redesign or disciplined exit.
• Daily liquidity and settlement resilience under severe but plausible network, bank and merchant-failure scenarios.
• Reduction in manual journals and reconciliations affecting revenue, merchant liabilities and chargeback balances.
• Capital allocation withdrawn from initiatives that miss adoption, economic or control thresholds.
• Finance talent retention, succession depth and the independence of challenge offered to commercial leaders.

The person

You are an accomplished group, divisional or listed-company CFO with 22–28 years in payments, banking, regulated fintech or another high-volume transaction business. You have signed financial statements and owned forecasts where operational data, contract terms and risk losses must be reconciled at scale. Purely corporate finance experience without day-to-day control accountability will not be enough.

You can move between a merchant contract, a transaction waterfall, a liquidity position and an audit-committee paper without losing the commercial argument. At minimum, your past remit has included a ₹2,200 crore P&L, balance sheet, budget or investment portfolio and a finance organisation of roughly 180 people. Experience establishing finance for a carve-out or newly accountable business unit is valuable.

The strongest candidates will have handled customer redress, conduct remediation, revenue-recognition challenge or a comparable event in which finance had to quantify uncertainty without taking over the role of compliance. They will be credible with growth-oriented founders or business leaders and equally clear when evidence requires a less attractive forecast.

Compensation and terms

The role carries fixed compensation of ₹3.2–4.6 crore plus performance variable and long-term incentive. The eventual mix will reflect the confirmed entity scope and relevant experience. Performance assessment will include forecast integrity, remediation closure, cash and liquidity resilience, finance capability and portfolio economics. This is a permanent, onsite appointment in Gurugram; a notice period of up to six months may be considered.

Confidentiality

The organisation will be named at the appropriate stage after reciprocal interest and confidentiality are established. Figures and operating circumstances are rounded and blended to prevent inference. Any candidate with a possible conflict should disclose the nature of that conflict to the search team without naming or approaching a suspected client.