SAO PAULO, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Brazil's biggest lender Itau Unibanco Holding SA on Friday said it was creating a unit focused on electronics payments whose head would be part of a reconfigured executive committee aimed at making the bank a more agile under a new CEO.

Current technology and operations vice-president Andre Sapoznik will head a newly launched unit focused on payments, which will include credit cards, the acquiring business Rede, the retail digital payments unit and cash management, according to an internal document reviewed by Reuters.

The move comes as traditional banks face increasing competition from fintech upstarts such as card processors StoneCo Ltd, PagSeguro Digital Ltd and fintech Nubank.

Sapoznik will be part of a new 12-member committee including Milton Maluhy, who will take over as Itau's chief executive in February, up from 6 members on the prior one. As part of the change, the bank is eliminating the title of vice president in a bid to cut a layer of management.

In the document, Itau said the new configuration was aimed at giving executives more flexibility to make decisions.

The bank's retail bank will be head by Andre Rodrigues already an executive at the unit, while Flavio Souza will command wholesale bank Itau BBA, where he is now in charge of the commercial bank.

The new committee will also have Carlos Constantini in charge of wealth management, as newcomers such as broker XP Inc increasingly lure away traditional bank clients. (Reporting by Carolina Mandl; Editing by Christian Plumb)