I build and lead the systems behind the system.
At Somali Payment Switch, I lead technology and operations for the national payment switch—connecting participant integration, payment services, settlement, reconciliation, observability, and institutional control.
The national switch was the transaction engine. The wider operating environment still needed participant integration, settlement movement, liquidity intelligence, trusted messaging, reporting, reconciliation, and control.
I architected and delivered the supporting systems and capabilities that connected those responsibilities into one usable operating platform.
The value was not any single service. It was the way the services worked together to create flow, visibility, control, and institutional independence.
Connect
Operate
Move
Govern
SIPS Connect gave each participant a secure, auditable integration layer—absorbing protocol complexity while protecting payment correctness.
TranslateCore Banking JSON to signed ISO 20022 payment, verification, status, return, and QR flows.
ProtectApply signature verification, certificate lookup, idempotency, duplicate protection, and return safety.
RecoverPersist transactions, handle timeouts, and use store-and-forward behavior when dependencies are unavailable.
ExplainPreserve an audit trail with health checks, metrics, logs, dashboards, and configuration APIs.
The domains make the control model inspectable. Together they show how participant integration, settlement, operations, governance, public services, and institutional capability work as one portfolio around the switch.
Connect Core Banking systems and participants to the switch through secure, normalized, and auditable payment flows.
Move settlement information reliably while making liquidity, matching, exceptions, and participant reporting visible.
Translate switch, participant, settlement, and fraud-event data into operational, executive, and regulatory signals.
Productize configuration, accounting, service onboarding, validation, and rollback around the switch platform.
Connect public-revenue and ecosystem workflows to payment infrastructure through governed service boundaries.
Create repeatable local engineering and operational capacity so the institution can evolve services with greater confidence.
These public repositories document selected areas of my individual contribution. They do not imply personal ownership of SPS infrastructure or diminish the institution and teams that operate it.
Secure ISO 20022 orchestration between participant Core Banking systems and the national switch.
Institutional README & NOTICE attributionView public repositoryAn invoice-first P2G gateway for verification, confirmation, reversals, callbacks, and reconciliation.
Institutional repository attributionView public repositorySPS’s operational control plane, originating from the Public Key Repository I delivered in September 2024 and now documented across trust, participant governance, liquidity, transaction intelligence, settlement, oversight, reporting, and traceability.
Direct implementation history · Sep 2024 · 14 documented subsystemsView public repositoryGood infrastructure does more than process transactions. It changes how confidently an institution can operate, adapt, and make decisions.
Controlled participant integration and repeatable service configuration supported onboarding and production preparation.
Internal tools and extensions reduced reliance on external change requests for operational and service evolution.
Liquidity, endpoint health, transaction movement, fraud rejections, and settlement status became actionable signals.
Audit trails, retries, checkpoints, duplicate protection, reconciliation, and rollback made recovery deliberate.
Payment-aware enterprise operations
I founded Forge Control to apply payment-infrastructure discipline to everyday enterprise operations. It is a governed operations platform for SMEs across the Middle East and Africa, starting with focused Property and Retail applications.
The shared architecture connects workflows, collections, reconciliation, accounting, reporting, and country-aware configuration. The thesis is simple: payment activity and business operations should be designed as one accountable system.
Visit Forge ControlI work where payments, operations, regulation, product, and engineering have to become one executable system. The strongest fit is a mandate with real institutional stakes, unclear boundaries, and a need for both technical depth and decision leadership.
Participant integration, ISO 20022 orchestration, retail-switch extensions, trust services, and production-readiness design.
Transaction matching, settlement movement, accounting integrity, exception evidence, and operational control across systems.
Control layers that turn fragmented platform, participant, liquidity, fraud, and transaction data into operational action.
Emerging-market product and operating models that connect payment activity, workflows, reporting, and institutional capability.
Abdulshakur Ahmed Aided
Abdulshakur Ahmed Aided is a Payment Systems Architect and National Switch Operations Leader. He serves as Acting Head of Operations and Head of IT at Somali Payment Switch, previously led software engineering at Dahabshil Bank International, and founded Forge Control. His work connects institutional strategy, payment architecture, financial control, and production operations.
I work with leaders and technical teams on high-stakes platforms, integration ecosystems, operating models, and the difficult space between product intent and production reality.
Discuss a payment architecture mandateBased in Somalia · Available for selected mandates across the country, MEA, and remotely