Kamran Khan

Bankable API Marketplace is an open banking API aggregator marketplace connecting banks with third-party service providers to embed financial products in their offerings. It is a unified, high-throughput, and low-latency platform with low cost and fast time-to-market.

The aim is to bring open banking to the mainstream by providing rapid, open banking compliance, minimizing cost and time to market, retaining and expanding the bank's customer base by creating new revenue streams, and meeting the growing demand for embedded financial products.

The achieved results:
• Plug-and-play bank API mapping
• Enabling third parties to embed APIs in their offerings
• Low-code and no-code integration without the need for coding and development skills
• New revenue streams, containing and expanding the customer base
• Standardization and multiple jurisdictions

alladitta.com marketplace is an online SaaS multi-vendor marketplace (B2B2C) that lets people and businesses sell products locally and internationally. It allows sellers of different types, such as individuals, SMEs, and large manufacturers, to sell products online and increase their market reach.

The product caters to vendors/sellers, home-based sellers, corporate companies (cotton, leather goods, spices, textiles, etc.), fulfillment services providers, delivery/riders, free riders with motorbikes (uber based) with verified access, courier/delivery companies, buyers/consumers, and people or companies who buy product/services.

Product features included warehouse and inventory, unlimited product customization, Amazon-like seller central, sales, promotions and discounts, quotations for wholesale purchases, bulk product import, export and integration, live chat, groups and staff, bundled products, inquiry manager, shipment tracking, composite products, notifications, access control, bulk stock manager, store radius search, catalog, product variations, ledger book, and more.

This app provides the ability to conveniently make tips/gratuity payments directly to app-based workers and leverage tip payments into exceptional service outcomes.

As a mobile application product management consultant, I:

• Provided consulting and ongoing advice to manage the company about the mobile app and deal with the engineering and development teams.
• Coordinated each stage of the mobile app development process and provided insights and advice where necessary.
• Analyzed the mobile app project and understood the effort, cost, duration, and size required.
Assisted and advised management in developing and adopting a project plan that can be reasonably understood by management of the company, including work breakdown schedule (WBS) and project schedule.
• Established the nature and tone of the relationship between company management and its outside development team on key communications.
• Created key performance metrics, risks, indicators, and goals.
• Highlighted future risks and mitigation strategies.

Built, advised, and restructured design, product, and marketing teams to enable the next stage of growth. Identified tech to enable faster MVP delivery of 100+ mobile screens, cutting development time to half.

As a program manager, I led the engineering teams to develop and implement internet banking solution for retail and corporate banks in the MENA region (Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi, Kuwait, and Oman).

My responsibilities included:

• Manage accounts: funds transfer SWIFT MT940, prepaid/postpaid card payment, bill payment, beneficiary, channel enrollment, special instructions, campaigns, back-office: user management, logs, maker/checker (Non/STP), limit management, future dated service and standing instructions.
• Included various devices, such as BlackBerry, Android, iPhone, iPad, and Symbian.
• Managed budgets and revenue and implemented project plans, tasks, deliverables, accountabilities, and milestones.
• Owned end-to-end project lifecycle, from kickoff to go-live/closure, implementation, execution and control, integration, data migration, SIT, UAT, and support.
• Introduced organizational processes, policies, resourcing, risk management, change management, issue management, stakeholder management, vendor management (4+ in a project), and partner management.
• Helped increase revenue retention by enhancing and aggressively pursuing integrated customer relationships resulting in decreased customer cancellation requests.

Veena Hussain Cosmetics is a marketplace for cosmetics and beauty products that went from 0 to 5,000 users, 10,000 email subscribers, and more than 20,000 unique visitors per month in the first two years.

Profitable from the beginning, the business grew 30% in the second year.

I delivered everything from scratch, from concept to market validation, user journeys, feedback, research, UI/UX design, product and project management, development, deployment, distribution, and operations.

I also focused on process design and specification for the development team, inbound marketing campaigns, branding, customer support, content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media marketing.

The corporate and wholesale internet banking platform was a leader in the Middle East, with more than 20+ million users.

Functionalities included:
• Corporate authorization, corporate enrollment, cash management, trade finance services, letter of credit (export, import, inquiry), guarantees, document collection (inward and outward), and shipping guarantee.
• Wealth management, customer portfolio, and customer assets.

Functions:
• Led the teams to ensure functional requirements were gathered, documented, signed off by stakeholders, and translated into Stories.
• Created project status reports and accurately tracked and managed project issues and risks using the RACI matrix.
• Participated in several pre-sales activities and helped assess sales success and overall cost factors.
• Mentored the team to deepen the knowledge of the business solution portfolio and provide extreme quality solutions at par with market competitors.
• Managed the engineering teams to develop and implement solutions that included integrations with core banking (Equation, Phoenix, T24), middleware (BizTalk, Fusion, Tibco), hardware security module (Thales HSM, Cryptomathic), signature management system, SMS banking, web app, and mobile banking.

As a product and program manager, I:

• Led teams to deliver and implement a wide variety of payment, liquidity, and collection systems with a global client portfolio.
• Developed and implemented large and complex local and global solutions and acted as primary focal point and owner of all activities, including payment business.
• Acted as an SME to close product gaps, streamline processes, and identify market and competition trends and customer demands.
• Explored and delivered client working capital/treasury requirements, devised solutions around a product offering, managed client relationships, and acted as a trusted adviser.
• Translated requirements into formal agreements/contracts, driving the efforts to client acceptance.
• Coordinated with business partners, managed ambiguity and moving targets, delivered within a timeline, and expected testing and quality.
• Managed clients, engineering teams, internal teams, vendors, and subcontractors and implemented these partnerships to address business opportunities.
• Engaged in design thinking workshops, proofs-of-concept, and effectively communicated technical answers.
• Conducted post demo feedback and ensured effectiveness within the compliance/regulatory bounds.

I was the program manager leading and delivering a vast and complex product of the bank's branch automation system.

The product consisted of a customer-centric software solution with a centralized view of the bank's customer, one software package, customer-centric vs. transaction-oriented views, and a multi-channel web-based architecture.

Functionalities included:
• Back office for the bank's branch, including cash handling, cash movement, and administration.
• Teller operations like account inquiries, transfers, payments, and cash in and out reports.
• Bank products seller role, including enrollment, service requests, account origination, and finance origination.
• Financial advisor consisting of wealth management, financial planning, and advisory services.

Results:
Significantly reduced the turnaround time (TAT) for payroll accounts provisioning and decreased errors in know your customer (KYC) standards and compliance.

I led the team to ideate functionalities such as low-value salary cardholders, sending money, and customer services using Western Union remittance APIs.

Also, developed and integrated second layer authentication, access rights management, log in using a PIN pad, a signature pad, and card integration for PIN verification.

Finally, I added API calls to display card list, card detail, card activation, last transactions, block and unblock PIN activation services, and integration with SharePoint.

As a software development manager, I automated the inward and outward cheque clearing process for Kuwait's largest financial house, a semi-government entity.

• Implemented various integration points, including NCR iTRAN Cheque Scanner machine, signature management database, Phoenix core banking system, Loan Application, etc.
• Contributed to pipeline and revenue increase by conducting demand generation activities, including customer workshops, tradeshows, and company events.
• Developed business vision and functional decomposition, requirements capture, and process modeling.
• Led the team to understand and work with the business and technology owners with strategic question-based selling skills.

Responsible for leading a team of four, from ideation to delivery, to create an automated mail scheduling software integrated with United States Postal Services (USPS) around mail delivery, pickup, and dropshipping.

Functionality included:
• Automated manual appointment management and induction reporting processes.
• Creation of electronic one-time, shell, and multi-stop appointments with the USPS while providing IMcb container barcodes related to appointments.
• Creation of one-time contents in the USPS FAST system, providing planned induction date/time and facility tied to their pallets.
• Automated and streamlined business decision-making about re-directions and multi-stop time interval decisions for appointments from one facility to another.
• Reports against no shows, arrival, and closeout data.
• Links with your transportation management systems (TMS) through APIS.
• Use of agile sprints conducted analysis, architect, design, development, and release management.
• Requirements gathering, business analysis, re-engineer, provided end to end automated solution.
• Management of offshore customers in the US and onshore cross-functional teams.

As a transformation program manager, I:

• Defined and implemented digital transformation policies as part of SOPs to identify, develop, and implement dashboards and automated systems supporting effective and efficient smart working.
Supervised strategic digital advisory and subsequently took ownership for delivering and executing digital transformation initiatives.
• Executed a portfolio of digital projects and ownership of end-2-end project implementations.
• Collaborated with business heads to identify digital transformation bottlenecks and improvement opportunities and recommend innovative solutions in a consultative way, helping them translate their business objectives into digital strategies.
• Steered the program with cross-functional workstreams with creative, marketing, and product teams to launch and perpetuate.
• Communicated and negotiated priorities with IT and engineering teams, using my in-depth knowledge and experience in technical delivery processes.
• Oversaw change management, tracking, monitoring, and communicating the progress of initiatives against defined project milestones and timely escalations.

Responsible for leading a team to implement various modules of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This contained sales, marketing, case management, lead generation, CRM 360 and 720 dashboards, lead capture, offer box, campaign-based targeting, and pre-approved products. I was also in charge of integration with IVR call center and agent desktop (ADT) systems with Avaya.

• Worked systematically and logically to resolve problems, address opportunities, and manage relationships.
• Used mediation skills and effectively communicated with both business and technical audiences.
• Conducted training and provided consultancy to educate internal teams, customers, and partners.

As a technical lead, I designed solutions and led the implementation of POS channel to support remittance and prepaid card solutions and Implemented Country/VISA switch certified Middleware, NCR, and Diebold low-level protocols NDC/DDC supported ATM and integration.

• Electronic data process of remittance-related transactions, audit, and logging reports.
• Administration of the onboard PMS and POS system.
• Integration with Oracle Fusion middleware, Temenos T24 core banking system, Payment Systems (HPS, TSYS).
• Conducted payment gateway and card scheme certifications for MNET, VISA, Mastercard, and ORIX POS.
• Provided subject matter expert consulting on alternate delivery channel (ADC), EFT-POS, gamification and loyalty applications, and PCI PA/DSS compliance standards.