Lesaka Technologies is a leading South African fintech company committed to driving financial inclusion and empowering merchants across formal and informal markets. Through innovative payment solutions, value-added services, and digital platforms, we enable businesses to thrive in a rapidly evolving financial ecosystem.

The Chief Growth Officer (CGO) will be the architect of Lesaka’s Merchant Division growth strategy, responsible for delivering sustainable and scalable revenue across our merchant ecosystem. This includes card acceptance, cash management, VAS, fintech solutions, and new digital products.

As the strategic owner of revenue, the CGO will integrate sales, marketing, pricing, partnerships, and customer success into a unified commercial engine that accelerates merchant acquisition, increases share of wallet, improves profitability, and drives long-term enterprise value.

This is a mission-critical leadership role for a visionary executive who thrives in fast-paced, high-growth environments and is passionate about transforming financial access for merchants across South Africa.

Revenue Strategy & Growth Leadership

• Develop and execute a multi-year revenue growth strategy covering acquisition, retention, cross-sell, and upsell.
• Identify high-value market segments, emerging opportunities, and whitespace for growth.
• Set annual and quarterly revenue targets, forecasting frameworks, and growth OKRs.

Go-to-Market & Commercial Execution

• Lead and integrate GTM functions: sales, marketing, product commercialization, partnerships, and customer success.
• Build scalable GTM programs to expand footprint across micro-merchants, SMEs, informal markets, and enterprise customers.
• Align product roadmaps with market needs to ensure competitive, value-driven offerings.

Sales Leadership & Channel Performance

• Oversee national field sales, telesales, agents, and channel partners.
• Improve sales productivity through optimized incentives, territories, tooling, and methodologies.
• Establish a performance-driven culture with clear metrics, coaching, and operational excellence.

Merchant Lifecycle & Customer Growth

• Own the end-to-end merchant lifecycle: onboarding, activation, usage, retention, and recovery.
• Build customer success programs that reduce churn and increase lifetime value.
• Drive adoption of multi-product bundles and platform stickiness.

Pricing, Profitability & Commercial Analytics

• Lead pricing strategy, packaging, discount governance, and margin optimization.
• Build advanced revenue analytics, segmentation models, and dashboard visibility for leadership.
• Partner with Finance to ensure revenue predictability, profitability, and cost-to-serve optimisation.

Partnerships & Ecosystem Expansion

• Develop strategic partnerships with retailers, banks, telcos, fintech providers, and industry bodies to enhance product distribution and market access.
• Explore new revenue streams through embedded finance, alternative data, and value-added merchant services.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Work closely with Product, Technology, Operations, and Finance to align revenue initiatives with business capability and execution needs.
• Advocate for customer needs and market intelligence across the organisation.
• Represent the merchant division at Exco and in investor or board-level discussions as required.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Marketing, Economics, or related field.
• 10+ years senior leadership experience in revenue, commercial, or business growth roles.
• Proven track record of delivering high-impact revenue growth in fintech, payments, merchant services, banking, or related digital ecosystems.

Preferred

• MBA or advanced degree.
• Experience in African emerging markets or digitally-enabled merchant ecosystems.
• Exposure to both high-growth environments (start-up/scale-up) and structured corporate settings.
• Strong understanding of card acquiring, POS, value-added services, and merchant financial products.

• Strategic Vision: Ability to craft and execute multi-year commercial growth strategies.
• Data-Driven Leadership: Skilled in analytics, forecasting, segmentation, and revenue modeling.
• Customer-Centric Mindset: Deep understanding of merchant needs across formal and informal sectors.
• Execution Excellence: Strong operational discipline with ability to scale teams and systems.
• Influential Leadership: Inspires cross-functional alignment and high performance.
• Innovation Orientation: Comfortable creating new revenue models and entering new markets.
• Agility & Resilience: Thrives in fast-moving, complex environments.
• Strong Communication: Clear, persuasive presentation and stakeholder engagement skills.

• Achievement of annual revenue and margin targets.
• Growth in merchant acquisition, activation rates, and retention.
• Increase in product penetration across the merchant base.
• Improved sales productivity and GTM efficiency.
• Expansion of high-value partnerships and commercial channels.
• Alignment of revenue strategy with Lesaka’s long-term growth agenda.

• Be part of a purpose-driven organization committed to financial inclusion.
• Lead a high-impact division shaping the future of merchant services in South Africa.
• Competitive executive compensation and benefits package.
• Opportunity to innovate and scale in a dynamic fintech environment.