Senior Business Analyst (Payments) at DeARX Services (Pty) Ltd

• We are seeking an experienced Senior Payments Business Analyst to join a high-performing banking and payments team responsible for delivering strategic payment initiatives across the organization. This role will play a critical part in shaping and enabling next-generation payment capabilities, with a strong focus on SWIFT payments, ISO 20022 migration, regulatory compliance, and digital transformation.
• The successful consultant will act as the bridge between business stakeholders, compliance teams, architecture, engineering, and delivery squads, ensuring that payment solutions are client-centric, scalable, compliant, and aligned to agile delivery principles.
• This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to large-scale payment modernization initiatives while working alongside industry-leading professionals within a dynamic banking environment.

Key Responsibilities

Business Analysis & Requirements Management

• Engage with business stakeholders to elicit, analyse, validate, and document business requirements.
• Translate complex business needs into clear, actionable functional and non-functional requirements.
• Develop detailed use cases, user stories, business process models, workflow diagrams, and functional specifications.
• Conduct gap analyses and recommend process improvements.

SWIFT Payments & ISO 20022

• Provide subject matter expertise across SWIFT payment messaging standards.
• Analyse and document MT and MX message flows and transformations.
• Support ISO 20022 adoption, migration, and optimization initiatives.
• Define data mapping requirements between legacy and target payment systems.
• Ensure alignment with industry standards and best practices.

Regulatory Compliance & Risk

• Collaborate with compliance, risk, and regulatory teams to ensure adherence to local and international payment regulations.
• Analyse regulatory impacts on payment processes and systems.
• Support the implementation of controls that mitigate operational and compliance risks.

Integration & Solution Design

• Work closely with architects, developers, and integration teams to design effective payment solutions.
• Facilitate requirements clarification sessions throughout the development lifecycle.
• Review solution designs to ensure alignment with business objectives and payment standards.

Testing & Implementation

• Define business test scenarios and acceptance criteria.
• Support SIT, UAT, and production rollout activities.
• Validate delivered solutions against business requirements.
• Assist with post-implementation reviews and continuous improvement initiatives.

Agile Delivery

• Participate actively within Agile delivery teams.
• Contribute to backlog refinement, sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Ensure requirements are adequately defined and prioritized to support delivery outcomes.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Build strong relationships with business, technology, compliance, operations, and external stakeholders.
• Facilitate workshops, requirement gathering sessions, and decision-making forums.
• Communicate complex concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Deliverables

The consultant will be responsible for producing and maintaining:

• Business Requirements Documents (BRDs)
• Functional Specifications
• User Stories and Acceptance Criteria
• Process Flow Diagrams
• Use Cases
• Data Mapping Specifications
• SWIFT MT/MX Message Analysis Documentation
• ISO 20022 Transformation Artefacts
• Test Scenarios and UAT Documentation
• Stakeholder Presentations and Reporting
• Risk and Impact Assessments

Minimum Requirements

Experience

• Minimum 8+ years Business Analysis experience within financial services.
• Proven experience in banking payments environments.
• Strong exposure to SWIFT messaging standards (MT and MX).
• Experience with cross-border payments and payment modernization initiatives.
• Practical experience supporting ISO 20022 migration programmes.
• Experience working within Agile delivery environments.

Technical Skills

• SWIFT Payments (MT & MX Messaging)
• ISO 20022 Standards
• Business Process Modelling
• Requirements Engineering
• Data Analysis and Data Mapping
• SQL for data interrogation and analysis
• Power BI or similar data visualization tools
• Understanding of API and systems integration concepts
• Basic Java or software development knowledge to facilitate collaboration with engineering teams

AI & Digital Capability

• Practical experience using AI-powered tools, specifically Claude, to enhance:
• Business analysis activities
• Requirements gathering and documentation
• Process modelling
• Data analysis
• Stakeholder communication
• Productivity and delivery efficiency