About Us

Hello Clever is building the next generation of payments and loyalty infrastructure by turning every transaction into growth for merchants.

We’re an AI-powered fintech operating across 22+ markets, helping businesses move money in real time and convert payments into measurable outcomes like higher repeat rates, bigger baskets, and smarter customer engagement. Our platform combines local account-to-account rails, embedded cashback and loyalty products, and powerful data intelligence (Clever AI), enabling merchants to launch offers, optimise ROI, and scale faster – all through a single integration.

We’re proud to be recognised on the global stage, including being named Australia’s Fastest-Growing Fintech, a Forbes Asia Top 100 company, ranked in the AFR Fastest-Growing Companies, and selected for Inc. Magazine’s Best in Business alongside some of the world’s most recognised organisations.

Unlock your potential with Hello Clever. We’re seeking a thoughtful and hands-on Product Designer (Japan) to help make Hello Clever easier for merchants to adopt, configure, operate, and grow with. If you enjoy working close to customers, untangling complex payment and onboarding workflows, and turning messy operational problems into simple product experiences, we’d love to hear from you.

• Position: Product Designer (Japan) – Full-time
• Level: Mid-level
• Location: Tokyo, Japan
• Working Mode: Hybrid

About The Role

Roughly half your work will be Japan-led: research with Japanese merchants and partners, the regulatory and localization problems specific to this market, and making sure Japanese merchant expectations are represented when we decide what to build. The rest is the same job for the rest of the platform — because the onboarding flow a Tokyo merchant uses is the flow a Sydney and a New York merchant use, and the improvements you find here should ship to all of them.

You will not maintain a Japanese fork of the product. Localization at Hello Clever is a platform capability: language, name and address ordering, currency and date formatting, content standards, and market-specific regulatory disclosure are properties of the shared system, so every market inherits the work and the next market costs less to launch.

Responsibilities

• Merchant Onboarding & Activation Design: Own design for the merchant journey from signup to first successful live transaction across markets — account setup, verification steps, payment configuration, integration setup, launch readiness, and the self-service paths that remove the need for Operations or Support intervention.
• Japan as Depth Market: Lead the Japanese merchant experience within that journey. Run research with Japanese merchants and partners, understand local business practices and UX expectations, and turn what you learn into changes to the core product rather than local workarounds.
• Dashboard & Product UX Improvements: Own UX improvements across merchant-facing experiences, including dashboard workflows such as payment links, transaction visibility, reporting, payment status, payouts, settlements, refunds, reconciliation, and self-service support.
• Payments, Compliance & Operational UX: Design intuitive product flows that help merchants understand and manage payment operations, while ensuring solutions comply with Japanese regulatory requirements, including EPSP(電子決済代行業） and FTSP（資金移動業）-related requirements.
• Platform Integrations & Product Expansion: Design UI/UX experiences for integrations with platforms such as Shopify and WooCommerce, ensuring seamless adoption for Japanese merchants and partners.
• Product Discovery & Market Research: Conduct user research with merchants, partners, and internal teams to identify local market needs, analyze competitors (e.g., Degica, Univapay, Stripe, Adyen), and translate insights into product improvements and clear requirements.
• Japanese Market Launch & Enablement: Create Japan-specific marketing creatives, product documentation, and enablement materials to support product launches, drive adoption, and establish feedback loops across Product, Engineering, Sales, Customer Success, Compliance, and Operations teams.

You’re a Perfect Fit if You Have

• 3-5 years of experience in product design, product management, product operations, customer experience, implementation, or a closely related role within fintech, payments, banking, ecommerce, or other regulated technology environments.
• A portfolio showing end-to-end product design work: problem framing, research, flows, information architecture, prototyping, high-fidelity UI, and what you learned from what shipped.
• Hands-on experience designing or improving fintech and payment products, with a strong understanding of payment flows including onboarding, payment processing, payouts, settlements, refunds, reconciliation, and merchant operations.
• Deep understanding of the Japanese payments ecosystem and regulatory landscape, including local payment methods, merchant expectations, banking practices, and compliance considerations when building financial products in Japan.
• Strong understanding of Japanese market nuances, including local business practices, UX expectations, language localization, and how to adapt global fintech products into experiences that feel native to Japanese merchants.
• Bilingual communication skills in Japanese and English, with the ability to bridge Japanese market requirements and global product teams by translating merchant needs, regulatory requirements, and local insights into clear product requirements.
• Experience designing and improving merchant-facing financial products, including onboarding flows, dashboards, payment configuration, integrations, reporting, settlement views, and self-service workflows.
• Strong product judgment with the ability to identify localization opportunities, define trade-offs, and translate ambiguous market needs into intuitive product experiences.
• Experience collaborating with Product, Engineering, Compliance, Operations, Sales, and Customer Success teams to deliver products from discovery through launch.
• Strong communication, prioritisation, and analytical skills, with the ability to balance merchant experience, regulatory requirements, business impact, technical feasibility, and operational scalability.

Bonus Points if You Have

• Experience adapting a global product for Japan, including Japanese UX writing and market-specific workflows, without building a separate product.
• Familiarity with Japanese payment regulation and licensing, including the Payment Services Act, Electronic Payment Service Provider (電子決済代行業), or Funds Transfer Service Provider (資金移動業) frameworks.
• Familiarity with account-to-account payments, virtual accounts, payouts, settlement, reconciliation, refunds, or disputes.
• Experience designing merchant dashboards, integration setup, or self-service support experiences for a platform or marketplace business.
• Experience contributing to a design system, component library, content standard, accessibility practice, or design QA process.
• Experience working across time zones in a distributed product team.

Why Join Hello Clever?

• High-Growth Fintech – Join a company helping redefine the future of payments and loyalty.
• Global Impact – Work with a business operating across 22+ markets with ambitious international growth plans.
• Category-Defining Product – Help build innovative real-time payments, AI-powered commerce and loyalty solutions.
• Meaningful Work – Contribute to products and partnerships that make money smarter, fairer and faster.
• Collaborative Culture – Join a passionate, ambitious team that values ownership, innovation and continuous learning.

Benefits & Perks

• Leave that supports real life – Enjoy Birthday Leave and Menstrual Leave in addition to your standard annual leave.
• Invest in your wellbeing and growth – Receive an annual Wellness & Development Allowance to support your personal and professional development.
• Technology support – Access a Technology Allowance to help create a productive working setup.
• Flexible hybrid working – Enjoy the balance of collaborating in person and working remotely.
• Celebrate together – Connect with colleagues through quarterly social events and our annual global company trip.

How to Apply

We keep our hiring process simple and effective:

• Initial Phone Call – A conversation with our People & Culture team to get to know each other and learn more about your experience and career aspirations
• Meet the Hiring Manager: An introductory conversation with the Head of Product
• Meet the Japan Team: Meet the Japan Country Lead and key collaborators across Product and Engineering, and confirm mutual fit
• Design Exercise/Final Interview

Ready to make an impact? Apply now.