Principal: Fraud Risk

About Cellulant:

Cellulant is Africa’s leading payments company, providing seamless, secure and innovative solutions that empower businesses, banks, and global brands to thrive in a fast-changing global economy. 

With a presence in over 24 countries and 200+ payment methods across cards, bank transfer and mobile money, our single API payment platform, Tingg, simplifies collections, disbursements, and reconciliations. It processes over 1 million transactions daily for market leaders across sectors such as Airlines, Telecoms, E-commerce, Ride-Hailing, Retail, and Remittances. 

By simplifying how people pay and get paid, we drive trust, commerce and scale – and connect companies to their ambitions.

Our Mission

To deliver seamless, secure and innovative payment solutions for businesses. 

Our Vision:

To create a connected world where businesses move money as easily as they share ideas. 

Our Story:

Across Africa, payments are more than transactions. They are gateways to prosperity, connecting people, businesses and communities to opportunities and growth. 

From enabling a logistics company in Lusaka to pay suppliers across borders, to enabling a hospitality brand in Lagos to scale effortlessly, to supporting an airline in Nairobi to reconcile payments from multiple platforms, Cellulant is the bridge that makes it all possible. 

Through trusted technology and customer-centric innovation, we build connections that inspire progress, strengthen economies and transform payments into a tool for progress.

Since our founding in 2003, we've continuously adapted and grown, leveraging our experiences to simplify payments for businesses. We are driven by an unshakable belief that seamless people-centred payments are the key to unlocking prosperity. 

Today, Cellulant powers online and offline payment processing, allowing businesses to collect payments, send payouts, and accelerate business growth.

Role Overview: 

The Principal: Fraud Risk owns Cellulant's enterprise fraud risk management capability across all payment products and markets, as both a 1st and a 2nd-line control function within Risk.

The role is accountable for proactively identifying emerging fraud threats, designing and optimising fraud prevention and detection controls, minimising fraud losses while protecting customer experience, and directing fraud governance across card, bank transfer, mobile money and alternative payment methods, continent-wide.

As Cellulant's subject matter authority on fraud, the Principal partners with Product, Engineering, Operations and Commercial teams to embed fraud controls into products and payment flows, and interfaces with Compliance on AML-adjacent fraud typologies and regulatory fraud reporting obligations, while retaining ownership of the fraud control framework itself.

What You'll do:

Fraud Strategy, Controls & Governance

• Set enterprise fraud detection strategy, rules architecture and risk appetite thresholds within Board/ExCo-approved risk appetite.

• Design risk-based fraud controls that balance prevention with customer experience; approve changes to fraud rule thresholds within delegated authority.

• Own and maintain fraud risk policies, standards and operating procedures; lead enterprise fraud risk assessments.

• Partner with Product and Engineering to embed fraud controls into new products and payment journeys before launch, across all markets.

• Set direction for fraud monitoring platform strategy and lead vendor selection/relationship governance (e.g. Falcon, Feedzai, Featurespace, Cybersource, Visa Risk Manager, or mobile-money-specific equivalents).

Fraud Analytics & Intelligence

• Direct fraud pattern, attack vector and emerging threat analysis across all markets and channels.

• Own fraud dashboards, KPIs and executive/Board-level reporting.

• Direct use of data and, where deployed, AI/ML-driven detection to improve accuracy and reduce false positives.

Incident Management & Escalation

• Own the response to significant/material external fraud events and chair post-incident reviews and root cause analysis.

• Ensure fraud incidents are documented and reported per governance requirements; track remediation to completion.

• Escalate to VP: Risk and, where thresholds are met, to Risk Committee/ExCo.

Fraud Operations Oversight

• Set standards, SLAs and quality thresholds for day-to-day fraud alert monitoring and investigation, performed by fraud operations/analyst resource.

• Review escalated and complex cases that fall outside standard investigation parameters.

• Drive continuous improvement of fraud investigation workflows and automation of investigation/case-management effort.

Internal Fraud Management

• Own the response and forensic investigation lifecycle for all internal financial crime/collusion incidents.

• Lead end-to-end internal fraud investigations involving employees, contractors, or third-party agents in coordination with HR, Legal, and Audit.

• Chair post-incide