Job Title: Partnerships Manager
Location: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Function: Strategic Partnerships (Banks, EMIs, Wallets, Regulatory Enablement)
Reports to: Group Chief Commercial Officer

Who We Are — PalmPay PalmPay is Africa’s fastest-growing fintech for consumers and businesses. We convert cash-heavy markets to digital commerce through agent networks, OEM distribution, acquiring infrastructure, wallets, collections, payouts, and credit. We operate with strong risk, compliance, and technology foundations, partnering closely with banks, regulators, payment ecosystems, telcos, and merchants across Africa and Asia. Culture & How We Execute We value thoughtful, methodical execution with a strong emphasis on long-term outcomes over short-term expediency. That means: ● Thoughtful, documented decisions; we optimize for durability, trust, and compliance. ● Calm, professional engagement with regulators and financial institutions. ● Strong cross-border collaboration across Africa and Asia. ● A builder’s mindset: small teams, high ownership, and meticulous follow-through. ● Clear written communication, practical problem-solving, and respect for local context. Role at a Glance ● Own and grow PalmPay’s financial institution partnership strategy in Burkina Faso, with a focus on sponsor banks, settlement banks, issuing and acquiring partners, wallet and EMI relationships, processors, and ecosystem enablers. ● Serve as the local lead for building durable relationships across the BCEAO / UEMOA payments environment, while partnering internally with Compliance, Legal, Product, Risk, and Commercial teams to unlock launches and scale. ● Develop the institutional layer that enables PalmPay’s products locally: collections, payouts, merchant acquiring, card acceptance, settlement, wallet interoperability, and future expansion into adjacent financial services. ● Work closely with colleagues across Africa, China, and Asia on approvals, certifications, localization, partner implementation, and risk controls. ● You are not responsible for running day-to-day branch operations, general administration, or the full country P&L. You enable commercial growth through access, partnerships, and institutional execution.

What You’ll Do
FI Partnerships Strategy & Execution
● Build and execute PalmPay’s partnership roadmap across banks, microfinance institutions where relevant, EMIs, wallet operators, processors, and payment infrastructure providers.
● Identify and close the key institutional relationships required for: ○ collections and disbursements, ○ merchant settlement, ○ sponsor banking, ○ safeguarding / float structures where relevant, ○ local mobile money and wallet-based payment enablement, ○ online and offline acceptance expansion.
● Lead commercial and operational negotiations with partners, including pricing, commercials, SLAs, settlement terms, risk allocation, dispute handling, and escalation frameworks.
● Own partner governance: issue resolution, implementation tracking, and renewal strategy. Regulatory & Ecosystem Enablement
● Support PalmPay’s local market development within the BCEAO / UEMOA regulatory structure, ensuring partnership structures are aligned with the applicable payment, e-money, and banking framework.
● Coordinate closely with Compliance and Legal on KYC/AML/CFT, sanctions, consumer protection, data-sharing, and operational risk matters tied to FI and wallet relationships.
● Maintain a practical view of regulatory developments and ecosystem changes, and translate them into internal action plans for product, operations, and partnerships teams.
● Build trusted working relationships with relevant ecosystem stakeholders, including banks, market infrastructure players, and industry bodies. Burkina’s payments landscape is shaped by regional systems for retail clearing and real-time gross settlement, namely SICA-UEMOA and STAR-UEMOA, while the e-money ecosystem includes both non-bank and bank-partnered initiatives. Banks, Wallets & Network Relationships ● Build strong relationships with priority institutions in Burkina Faso’s banking and wallet ecosystem. ● Develop partnership structures with banks and wallet operators that improve PalmPay’s: ○ local collections coverage, payout reliability, merchant acceptance, settlement resilience, interoperability, wallet and mobile money product capability.
● Work across an ecosystem where official BCEAO listings already show active partnerships among banks and providers such as Coris, Ecobank, UBA, Orabank, Banque Atlantique, Orange Money, Wave, Moov Money, WIZALL, and Telecel. Cross-Functional Commercial Enablement
● Partner with Commercial, Product, Operations, Risk, and Finance teams to unlock new use cases and improve partner performance.
● Support merchant and enterprise expansion by ensuring the right local banking and payment infrastructure is in place.
● Help shape launch sequencing, partner integration priorities, and market-readiness plans for Burkina Faso.
● Act as the internal bridge between local institutional realities and PalmPay’s broader regional strategy. Cross-Regional Collaboration
● Work closely with colleagues in China and broader Asia on: partner onboarding and approvals, localizing product flows to Burkina Faso / UEMOA requirements, technical and operational certifications, risk and fraud controls, settlement and reconciliation design, sharing local market intelligence and partnership insights. Reporting & Scope Boundaries
● Provide clear updates on partnership pipeline, signed institutions, implementation progress, ecosystem risks, and key bottlenecks.
● Track success through: number and quality of FI / EMI partnerships signed, speed of implementation, settlement and operational reliability, breadth of rail coverage, contribution to launch readiness and commercial enablement.
● You do not own general sales execution or day-to-day market operations; instead, enable those outcomes through institutional partnerships and infrastructure access.

What You’ll Bring
● 4–7+ years of experience in payments, banking partnerships, merchant acquiring, wallets, or fintech business development, ideally in WAEMU / UEMOA or Francophone West Africa.
● Strong understanding of how to build and manage partnerships with: Banks, EMIs / wallet operators, processors, acquirers, payment infrastructure players.
● Familiarity with the BCEAO / WAMU regulatory and market structure, and comfort operating in a multi stakeholder environment shaped by regional rails and local institutional relationships.
● Demonstrated ability to negotiate commercials, SLAs, settlement terms, and risk-sharing constructs with financial institutions.
● Strong execution discipline: able to move from partner mapping to negotiation to launch readiness.
● Excellent stakeholder management and written communication.
● Fluent French is essential; strong English is highly preferred.
● High integrity, sound judgment, and comfort operating with autonomy in a lean, high-ownership environment. Nice to Have
● Existing network across Burkina Faso banks, EMIs, wallet operators, or regional UEMOA payments stakeholders.
● Experience with merchant acquiring, collections, payouts, or interoperability products.
● Experience working across Africa–Asia teams and time zones.
● Exposure to, local switching, settlement, or treasury / liquidity partnerships.