Business Development Manager France (f/m/d) - FinTech Startup

We previously co-founded and scaled Viafintech (Barzahlen) to more than 100 employees, building one of Germany’s leading FinTech companies with operations across 17 markets in Europe and the US. In 2021, Viafintech was acquired by the NYSE-listed Paysafe Group in a three-digit million-euro transaction.

Finperks is our next venture.

Founded in summer 2025, Finperks is building a unified infrastructure for prepaid products, including gift cards (e.g. Apple, Amazon, Google), airtime, and eCash, accessible through a single API. Our goal is to simplify a fragmented prepaid value chain and enable businesses to integrate and distribute prepaid products more efficiently.

Within the first months, we have onboarded 700+ brands and already built a solid customer base. The prepaid market is substantial, with annual volumes of approximately €600bn today, expected to grow significantly to €1.800bn by 2028.

By reducing the number of intermediaries and connecting brands more directly with clients, Finperks aims to improve efficiency and global reach. While prepaid products are currently concentrated in developed markets, we see long-term potential for broader global adoption, including emerging markets.

We are a highly growing company with a current team of 8 people based in Berlin-Charlottenburg, combining experienced team members from our previous company with new hires. We value ownership, collaboration, and a pragmatic, low-ego working style.

Join us early and help build a sustainable, global prepaid infrastructure.

Tasks

As a Business Development Manager, you work closely with Founder Sebastian Seifert to identify, develop, and scale strategic, high-impact partnerships across industries such as Banks & Fintechs, Retailers, HR & Payroll providers, Crypto providers, and consumer brands. Your role focuses on building a small number of highly relevant enterprise partnerships with significant long-term impact. Moreover, as a Business Development Manager France, you will have a special focus on the French market and French-speaking clients.

Your key responsibilities include:

• Owning the end-to-end business development process from initial outreach and relationship building to product demos, negotiations, and closing.
• Acquiring a limited number of highly strategic enterprise partners (approximately 5–6 per year), prioritizing quality and long-term value over high-volume customer acquisition.
• Managing complex B2B sales cycles of up to 6 months, involving multiple stakeholders and decision-makers on the partner side.
• Proactively identifying and engaging partners with the potential to generate €10M+ in annual voucher turnover per partnership.
• Developing tailored partnership and value propositions aligned with industry specifics, partner needs, and decision-making structures.
• Driving commercial discussions and deal structuring in close collaboration with the founder and internal stakeholders.
• Representing Finperks in partner meetings, industry events, and on-site visits across Europe, with regular travel (approximately 2–3 trips per month).
• Building and maintaining a focused, high-quality partnership pipeline, ensuring clear prioritization, transparency, and realistic forecasting.
• Continuously gathering market and partner insights to refine Finperks’ partnership strategy and growth roadmap.

Requirements

Must-haves:

• A structured and disciplined working approach, with the ability to prioritize, plan, and manage complex sales processes over extended periods of time.
• A hungry, ambitious, and goal-driven mindset, motivated by building meaningful partnerships and closing high-impact deals.
• High frustration tolerance and resilience, with the persistence to continue engaging prospects despite multiple rejections and long sales cycles.
• Genuine passion for working with people, building trust, and winning partners over through strong interpersonal skills.
• Clear willingness to personally execute operative, hands-on sales work, including outreach, follow-ups, demos, and negotiations.
• Strong commercial and negotiation skills, with the ability to structure and close partnership agreements with significant revenue impact.
• Ability to work closely with founders or senior leadership, acting as a trusted sparring partner in strategic and commercial discussions.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills in English, suitable for interactions with C-level and senior stakeholders.
• Willingness and flexibility to travel within Europe approximately 2–3 times per month.
• High level of ownership, self-organization, and accountability, with comfort operating in an early-stage startup environment.
• Ability to conduct business professionally in French and English.

Nice-to-haves:

• Several years of experience in management or strategy consulting, ideally with exposure to commercial strategy, go-to-market, or partnership-driven business models.
• Several years of experience in B2B business development, partnerships, or enterprise sales, ideally in a startup, scale-up, fintech, SaaS, or platform environment.
• Demonstrated ability to manage long and complex B2B sales cycles (up to 6 months) involving multiple stakeholders and decision-makers.
• Experience working with high-value, low-volume deals, focusing on a small number of strategic customers rather than high-frequency transactional sales.
• German language skills are a plus but not required.

Benefits

• Work directly with the founder to build and scale Finperks’ most important strategic partnerships.
• Own a small number of high-impact enterprise partnerships with significant strategic and revenue relevance.
• Play a key role in shaping Finperks’ partnership and go-to-market strategy from an early stage.
• Gain hands-on experience in complex B2B negotiations and long-cycle enterprise sales across Europe.
• Help build processes and structures from the ground up in a fast-growing startup.
• Experience fast personal and professional growth in a high-ownership, high-autonomy environment.
• Competitive compensation with performance-based upside.

Office Policy: Hybrid. We don’t have clear rules, but generally expect 80% attendance in the office. Not because of control or distrust, but because of speed, learning, and context compound when people work side by side**.**