I joined Papel as part of the Executive Team, overseeing three different product subsidiaries: a Digital Wallet, a Merchant Payment Gateway, and a Crypto Payment app. My primary responsibility was to build a new Product and Design organisation, including hands-on involvement in product scoping activities, and to collaborate with other business units for the launch of an MVP. Papel's operational market is Turkey, with the ambition to become one of the top three digital wallets and payment service providers in the region. My role encompassed a broad range of responsibilities, including:

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1. Collaborating with the business owner to define the vision and roadmap for the launch and beyond. This included securing buy-in from the Board for key initiatives and facilitating OKR sessions with the leadership team.

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2. Developing, growing, and mentoring the product management and design team. I introduced new tools to improve product scoping and design processes, fostering closer collaboration between engineering and product teams.

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3. Working with compliance to fulfil licensing requirements for geographical expansion beyond Turkey, including into Canada, South America, and Europe.

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4. Leading procurement for product development initiatives, which involved identifying and managing technology vendors and partners in areas such as Identity & Verification, crypto money movement (on-ramp and off-ramp), loyalty cashback brands, card manufacturing, POS hardware, and card networks (Mastercard, Visa, and BKM).

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5. Creating the scope and framework for Papel's proprietary payment rails to enable wallet-to-wallet transactions within the Papel ecosystem. This included developing a new ledger system to handle inter-network transactions.

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6. Recommending innovative features for the merchant and consumer product sets to help Papel compete and differentiate itself from other service providers in the market, such as cashback in the form of gold and Save Now Buy Later features in the consumer app.

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7. Enhancing Management Information (MI) reporting and product analytics by implementing tools like Amplitude, Mixpanel, and Adjust, to help stakeholders track product performance.

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8. Creating the scope for a Fiat-to-Crypto payment app for markets where use of crypto as a funding method was prohibited. This allowed users of the app to register for a virtual card that allowed them to link their crypto wallet and fund virtual card transactions in real-time.

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OUTCOME The product team successfully launched an MVP wallet app in Turkey, acquiring 78,000 users within the first three months, aided by a cashback program with local brands. The wallet included a Papel-branded prepaid Mastercard available to subscribers. Additionally, we launched a Payment Services solution for merchants, offering features like automated onboarding, analytics, payment links, online payments, alternative payment methods, and physical POS systems. I also led efforts to build a 'hero' community of 300 consumers and 7 mid-market merchants, enabling the product and marketing teams to conduct direct user research. Moreover, I expanded the Product & Design team from 1 to 14 members in the UAE and Turkey, and led product and engineering retrospectives to continuously improve the frequency of product releases.