Digital Payments Architect — National UPI Implementation (Guyana Program)Location: Hyderabad (Hybrid) | Type: Full-time Practice: Digital Payments & FinTech | Engagement: Government of Guyana National UPI Rollout, in partnership with NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL)

About The Ksquare GroupThe Ksquare Group is a global consulting company that delivers cutting-edge technological solutions through customized projects that improve decision-making with speed and quality. By partnering with leading technology providers, Ksquare accelerates digital transformation initiatives for its clients across industries and geographies. Our teams work in a dynamic environment focused on innovation, collaboration, and measurable business impact.

About the ProgramThe Government of Guyana is implementing a national real-time digital payments platform based on India's Unified Payments Interface (UPI), in partnership with NPCI International Payments Ltd (NIPL). Ksquare has been entrusted with end-to-end ownership of this program — from the UPI platform implementation, working hand-in-hand with the NIPL/UPI India team, through to onboarding the country's banking institutions and driving merchant and business adoption once the platform is live.

This is a rare opportunity to architect and operationalize a nation's digital payments backbone from the ground up.

Role DescriptionThe Digital Payments Architect will be Ksquare's senior-most technical owner for the UPI program. You will represent Ksquare in all technical engagements with the NIPL/UPI India implementation team, own the end-to-end solution architecture for the UPI deployment in Guyana, and lead the technical onboarding of banks, payment service providers (PSPs), and merchants onto the platform.

We are looking for someone who has done this before — a practitioner who has been part of a UPI or comparable national instant-payments deployment (implementation, bank integration, or ecosystem rollout) and can take full ownership from Ksquare's side.

Key ResponsibilitiesPhase 1 — UPI Platform Implementation (with NIPL / UPI India team)

- Serve as Ksquare's technical counterpart and single point of ownership with the NIPL/UPI India implementation team throughout deployment.
- Own the end-to-end solution architecture: UPI switch deployment, core infrastructure, network topology, security architecture, and integration with the national banking ecosystem and central bank systems.




- Define system and integration patterns for bank connectivity (issuer/acquirer/PSP integrations), including messaging standards (ISO 8583 / ISO 20022 / UPI APIs), tokenization, and settlement flows.
- Drive environment setup, sandbox testing, NPCI-style certification cycles, UAT, and go-live readiness for the platform and participating institutions.
- Ensure the architecture meets requirements for security, scalability, high availability, disaster recovery, and regulatory compliance (including engagement with the Bank of Guyana and relevant regulators).

Phase 2 — Ecosystem Ownership: Bank & Merchant Onboarding

- Own the technical onboarding roadmap for all banking institutions in Guyana: integration design, certification, testing, and production cutover for each bank.
- Define and standardize onboarding playbooks, API specifications, integration kits, and certification checklists for banks, PSPs, and payment aggregators.
- Lead merchant and business enablement from the platform side: QR standards, merchant acquiring flows, payment gateway/aggregator integrations, and support for merchant-facing applications.
- Establish operational frameworks post-go-live: dispute resolution and chargeback handling, reconciliation and settlement operations, fraud and risk monitoring, uptime/SLA management.
- Act as the ongoing technical authority for the UPI ecosystem in Guyana, coordinating between government stakeholders, NIPL, banks, and merchants.

Ongoing

- Guide and mentor Ksquare's engineering and integration teams delivering on the program.
- Review solution designs, manage technical risk, and support program planning and stakeholder communication at the executive and government level.
- Document architectures clearly and communicate technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences, including government and central bank stakeholders.

QualificationsMust-Have
- Direct, hands-on experience with UPI — as part of NPCI/NIPL programs, a bank's UPI stack, a PSP/TPAP (e.g., building or integrating UPI payment apps), a UPI switch/technology provider, or an international UPI deployment. Candidates who have led or played a core role in a national or large-scale instant-payments rollout (UPI,



IMPS, or comparable schemes such as PIX, PromptPay, or Aani) will be strongly preferred.
- Deep expertise in payments architecture for complex, distributed, high-availability, high-TPS systems: switching, routing, settlement, reconciliation.
- Strong knowledge of UPI ecosystem mechanics: NPCI certification processes, PSP/issuer/acquirer roles, VPA/alias resolution, QR specifications (including interoperable QR), mandates/AutoPay, and dispute management (e.g., URCS or equivalent).
- Expertise in system and API integration: bank core systems (CBS), payment gateways, aggregators, and third-party services; messaging standards including ISO 8583 and ISO 20022.
- Strong grounding in payments security and compliance: PCI DSS, encryption/HSM usage, tokenization, fraud and risk management frameworks, and regulatory/central-bank compliance.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and microservices-based architectures, including on-prem/hybrid deployment models common in central-bank environments.
- Proven ability to lead multi-party programs: coordinating across government bodies, regulators, scheme operators (NPCI/NIPL), multiple banks, and internal teams across locations and time zones.
- Hands-on software development background in contemporary languages and frameworks relevant to payments (e.g., Java, Go, Node.js).
- Excellent documentation, stakeholder communication, and executive presentation skills.

Good-to-Have
- Experience with international UPI expansion programs or cross-border payment corridors.
- Experience onboarding banks or merchants onto a payments scheme at scale (integration programs, certification management).
- Familiarity with national digital public infrastructure (DPI) initiatives, financial inclusion programs, or central bank digital payment strategies.
- Exposure to emerging-market or Caribbean/LatAm banking environments.
- Advanced certifications in architecture (e.g., TOGAF) or payments.

Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field; advanced degrees or payments certifications are a plus.

What Makes This Role Unique
- Own a country-level payments transformation — not a feature, not a module, an entire national ecosystem.
- Work directly with the NPCI International (UPI India) team on one of the first sovereign UPI deployments outside India.
- Long-term ownership: you build it, you scale it, you run the ecosystem.

📌 Digital Payments Architect (Hyderabad)
🏢 The Ksquare Group
📍 Hyderabad