Merchant Onboarding & Experience Assistant Manager

The Merchant Onboarding & Experience Assistant Manager (Lead) operates within a high-growth fintech environment, supporting the acquisition and activation of merchants across payment and all Boost payment gateway products. The role is critical in ensuring a seamless, compliant, and efficient onboarding journey—from merchant application, verification (KYC/KYB), to account activation and post-onboarding support.

Positioned between frontline onboarding operations and strategic functions, this role bridges Merchant Operations, Risk, Compliance, Product, and Tech to optimise onboarding turnaround times, minimise friction, and ensure strong risk controls are embedded throughout the merchant lifecycle.

Responsibilities: 

• The Merchant Onboarding & Experience Assistant Manager is responsible for overseeing end-to-end merchant onboarding operations, ensuring applications are processed accurately and within defined SLAs while maintaining compliance with regulatory and internal risk requirements.
• The role involves managing onboarding pipelines, reviewing complex or high-risk merchant cases, and ensuring proper execution of KYB/KYC checks, document verification, and due diligence processes. The incumbent is also responsible for handling merchant escalations related to service supports, onboarding delays, rejections, or account activation issues, ensuring clear communication and timely resolution.
• A key focus area is identifying bottlenecks within the onboarding journey—such as documentation gaps, system limitations, or verification delays—and working closely with Product and Tech teams to implement scalable improvements. This includes leveraging data and operational insights to reduce turnaround time (TAT), improve approval rates, and enhance overall merchant experience.
• The role also requires close alignment with Risk and Compliance teams to ensure onboarding processes are robust against fraud and regulatory risks, while still enabling business growth. Post-onboarding, the Assistant Manager supports merchant experience by addressing early-stage issues and ensuring a smooth transition into active usage.

Job Requirements:  

Typically, the role requires min of 5 years of relevant experience in Merchant Operations, Due diligence Onboarding process KYC/KYB, Customer Experience, or Service Operations—preferably within a fintech, payments, acquiring, payment gateway environment.

Specific Experience Expectations:

• Merchant Onboarding / KYC Operations:

Proven experience managing or supporting end-to-end merchant onboarding processes, including KYB/KYC verification, document review, and due diligence.

• Operational & SLA Management:

Strong experience in managing onboarding pipelines, meeting turnaround time (TAT) targets, and ensuring high accuracy and quality standards.

• Risk & Compliance Exposure:

Hands-on experience working with Risk/Compliance teams, with a solid understanding of fraud prevention, AML considerations, and regulatory requirements in onboarding. (PayNet, BNM & Visa Master standards)

• Escalation & Stakeholder Management:

Experience handling complex merchant onboarding cases or escalations, with the ability to balance merchant experience, business needs, and compliance requirements.

• Data-Driven Process Improvement:

Ability to analyse onboarding funnels, identify drop-off points or bottlenecks, and implement improvements to enhance approval rates and reduce friction.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration:

Demonstrated experience working with Product, Tech, Commercial, and Operations teams to improve onboarding systems and processes.

• Team Leadership / Mentorship:

Prior experience in mentoring team members, acting as a senior specialist or team lead, and contributing to team performance and quality management.

From a team perspective, the role includes mentoring onboarding specialists, driving quality and accuracy standards, and building operational capabilities to support increasing onboarding volumes.

At this level, the incumbent is expected to demonstrate strong ownership, decision-making, and stakeholder management, while contributing to automation, process optimisation, and continuous improvement initiatives to scale merchant onboarding efficiently.