product manager · payments · digital platforms

Naming the problem
before naming the solution.

I'm Phil Zaayman, a Product Manager specialising in payments and digital platforms. I work where customer experience, product decisions and delivery reality meet.

Good product work starts with a signal, not a solution. Customer feedback, merchant behaviour, support issues, operational context and metrics usually tell the story first. The work is to name the problem clearly enough for a team to act.

How I Think View Résumé →

How I Think

Signal → Problem → Insight → Opportunity → Validation → Outcome

SignalProblemInsightOpportunityValidationOutcome

Signal

What happened?

Problem

What needs to be solved?

Insight

What pattern matters?

Opportunity

What can we do?

Validation

What needs testing?

Outcome

What changed?

The framework is deliberately simple: understand what happened, name the problem, find the pattern, frame the opportunity, test the risky assumptions, and then look for evidence that something changed.

I use AI to accelerate research, synthesis, requirements analysis and prototyping. It helps with the work; it does not replace judgement, problem framing or validation.

Selected Work

Product thinking applied in real systems.

Three examples of product thinking applied across payments, FinTech and digital subscriptions.

Payment Acceptance / Payment Confidence

Ozow · Product Manager

Problem: Customers and merchants need certainty when payment states, orchestration and reconciliation are complex.
Contribution: Synthesise customer and merchant feedback, product metrics, stakeholder input and technical constraints into prioritised problems, requirements and acceptance criteria.
What changed: Keep product decisions centred on checkout certainty, orchestration, reconciliation and merchant trust.
Outcome / evidence: Clearer product decisions and delivery-ready work that connect front-end confidence to platform and operational realities.

FinTech / Wallets / Payments

Go121 / Flash Group · Contract Product Manager / Business Analyst

Problem: Onboarding, wallets, payments, transactions, reporting and training crossed front end, back end, database, CMS and third-party integrations.
Contribution: Mapped lifecycle and transaction flows, turned customer and market insight into requirements, and supported front- and back-end testing.
What changed: Connected customer journeys to the systems, process flows and delivery documentation behind them.
Outcome / evidence: Clearer delivery and release readiness across a broad FinTech product stack.

Digital Subscription / Customer Experience

Showmax / MultiChoice · Senior Business & Product Analyst

Problem: Subscription payments depended on billing, CRM, regional priorities and external payment and service providers.
Contribution: Shaped business cases and requirements, coordinated Africa roadmap inputs, and worked across cards, vouchers, discount codes and in-app payments.
What changed: Brought regional payment and customer-experience needs into central product and development streams.
Outcome / evidence: Supported payment and billing improvements alongside CRM and lifecycle tooling.

Looking for employment history and recruiter detail? View the résumé →

About

The point where signal, payments and delivery meet.

My background spans payments, FinTech, digital subscriptions, iGaming, wallets, onboarding, reporting, CMS and back-office platforms. The common thread is turning complex systems and competing signals into clearer product decisions.

I prefer clear problems, small bets, useful requirements and product work that gives engineering, design, operations and stakeholders a shared understanding of what matters next.

Payments and merchant experienceDigital platforms and customer journeysProduct discovery, prioritisation and delivery clarityAI-enabled research, synthesis and prototyping

Journey in Product

Marketing & digital foundations

Strategy, CRM and customer understanding — where the instinct to look for the signal first began.

Gaming platforms & product systems

Back-office tools, roadmaps, specifications, integrations and the feedback loops behind large digital products.

Player, entertainment & payment experiences

UX, localisation, suppliers, subscription payments and cross-functional product delivery.

Independent consulting

FinTech, iGaming, informal retail, e-learning, VAS, wallets, reporting and platform integrations.

Payments & merchant experience

Payment acceptance, checkout certainty, orchestration, reconciliation, product decisions and delivery alignment.

The thread is simple: notice the signal, understand the system, name the problem and help teams ship the right work.

Things I'm Thinking About

AI as a product tool, not a title

Where AI genuinely speeds up research, synthesis, requirements and prototyping — and where human judgement still matters most.

Payment confidence

What makes a customer or merchant feel certain about a payment, especially when the underlying system is complex?

Signal → Opportunity

How a messy signal becomes a named problem, a framed opportunity and a testable assumption without jumping straight to features.

Beyond Product

Outside product work, I have a soft spot for obscure 80s big hair rock and building things that feel genuinely useful. I once played bass in a rock band called TonyDanza. I do a lot of my thinking on trail runs and I'm drawn to problems that do not have obvious answers.

I also volunteer at the Friends of the South African Air Force Museum.

Contact

Let's talk product, payments or the useful things in between.

Email Phil LinkedIn GitHub

Resume →

Naming the problembefore naming the solution.