Product Lead - UPI Acquiring

Role Overview

Lead the UPI acquiring charter for Airtel Payments Bank, owning merchant & payment aggregator ecosystem, driving product strategy, execution, regulatory alignment, and revenue growth while ensuring high reliability, fraud control, and superior merchant experience at scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Product Strategy & Roadmap
• Own the end-to-end roadmap for UPI acquiring (static and dynamic QR, intent, collect, autopay/subscriptions)
• Drive feature enhancements through market & competitor analysis and ecosystem trends
• Perform cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to prioritize high-impact initiatives
• Manage a well-groomed backlog (JIRA), balancing revenue growth, cost efficiency, and platform stability
• Define and drive quarterly & annual roadmaps, ensuring alignment with business goals
• Identify and work on additional opportunities leading to an incremental impact on bank’s key matrix.
• Provide leadership visibility via structured reviews on roadmap progress, delivery, and outcomes
• Merchant & Aggregator Ecosystem
• Build and scale partnerships with Payment Aggregators and key merchants
• Drive solutions for merchant onboarding, activation, lifecycle management
• Expand online & offline acceptance footprint in collaboration with Alliance, GTM and sales teams
• Growth & Monetization
• Drive TPV, transactions, and active merchant growth for UPI acquiring
• Identify and scale monetization levers (pricing, VAS, cross-sell opportunities)
• Optimize merchant journey: onboarding → activation → engagement → retention
• Execution & Stakeholder Management
• Partner with engineering teams to ensure timely delivery (grooming, sprint planning, execution)
• Create clear PRDs, user stories, and Figma-based user flows/screens
• Ensure “First-Time-Right” delivery via:
• Well-defined acceptance criteria & test cases
• Strong oversight of UAT and release readiness
• Drive seamless cross-functional collaboration (risk, compliance, ops, finance)
• Manage NPCI & regulatory engagement:
• Work on/with NPCI communications, circulars, and discussions
• Respond to regulatory queries and ensure timely compliance implementation
• Collaborate with banking operations teams to:
• Ensure smooth refunds, reversals, and chargebacks
• Design & enhance SOPs to improve operational efficiency
• Collaborate with Alliance team to discuss possible business opportunities and build that in product roadmap.
• Work with internal control functional teams to identify potential suspicious patterns, build rules, and define consequence management around it.
• Lead a team of 2-3 product managers and product Ops and define career paths for them.
• Work will all the stakeholders in collaborative environments.
• Risk, Compliance & Operations
• Ensure adherence to RBI/NPCI guidelines
• Strengthen fraud detection, dispute management, and reconciliation processes
• Optimize settlements and merchant experience
• Data, Monitoring & Performance
• Own key metrics: TPV, success rates, merchant activation, retention, cost per transaction
• Enable reporting, dashboards, and real-time alerts for:
• Success/failure trends (overall & merchant-level)
• Fraud monitoring and risk signals
• System performance & stability
• Drive data-led decision-making and targeted merchant-level interventions

Qualifications

• 9–12 years in payments/product management (strong UPI acquiring experience preferred)
• Deep understanding of UPI ecosystem, NPCI guidelines, and merchant payments
• Experience with Payment Aggregators / PSPs / large-scale merchant ecosystems
• Strong analytical, execution, and stakeholder management skills