Senior Specialist Payment Partnerships (Everyday Banking) at Absa Group Limited (Absa)

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE ROLE:

• As part of the Payments Partnerships centre of excellence, this is an exciting opportunity in which the role holder will influence Absa’s payments partner journey through optimal interbank participation, industry relationship facilitation, PSO and internal business unit engagement whilst ensuring that Absa’s end-to-end payments partner supply chain functions optimally.
• Performing the role of a Subject Matter Expert across the Absa group. The role holder will be responsible for establishing an overall health position of Absa Payment partnerships with strong alignment to the Absa product clusters as relationship owners.
• Working in close collaboration with product areas, the job holder will develop an overarching payment partnership framework and guiding principles to ultimately shape / inform go / no go payment partnerships decisions and maintain the overall payment partnership plan across multiple payment rails that seeks to extract value from strategic partnerships.

Job Description

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

The high level duties of the role:

• Evaluation of all new payment partners against the defined risk framework and maintenance of a repository of all reviews performed and the outcomes/decisions recommended
• Active monitoring and guidance of the TPPP’s, ISO & Payment Sponsorships, although ownership resides with the BU Product areas .
• Maintain strong relationships with the key payment partners and the product level relationships as these relationships will frequently be stress tested in various ways (Commercial, Contractual, Operational, Compliance, Change, New Opportunities etc.). 
• Maintain the relationship and Absa presence on key industry forums (e.g. PASA) in order to influence and provide guidance on key strategic issues.
• Responsible for the research and drafting of comprehensive briefings to Senior Executives who represent Absa on external boards and committees
• Contribute and participate in industry forums created for the purpose of maintaining the integrity of payment transactions across the national payment system.
• Facilitate sessions between Product, Group Information Services (GIS) teams, Group Information Technology (IT), Group Finance teams, Product Control and Risk
• Ensure that our payment partners have line of sight to all applicable compliance programs and the impacted product areas are clear on any potential non-compliance triggers.
• Recommend changes to the way of work in accordance with best practice in the Card industry.
• Identify opportunities for existing payment partners to share capability that further enhances our overall payments product offerings
• Contribute to the overall Risk management strategy across the Card payment value chain.
• Ensure that all gaps are identified and closed when it comes to Revenue and other leakages.
• Maintain the balancing process between Business, IT and Finance in order to optimize the revenue generated from payment partnerships
• Contribute to the optimization of the Absa Card Payment strategy, business planning processes and BOW deliverables.

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:

• B Degree or equivalent NQF Level 7 qualification or higher
• At least three (3) years Payments expertise (i.e. worked in Card, T&D or Payments Environments)
• Solid experience of working across external organizations in the payments industry
• In-depth understanding of Payments Business Models and Inter-bank pricing structures.
• Retail / Banking experience is a distinct advantage.

Education

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology