Senior Specialist Payment Partnerships - Johannesburg at Absa South Africa

Job Summary

• As part of the Payments Partnerships centre of excellence, 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 in all aspects in order to become a leading payments provider to customers and businesses.
• Perform 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 (albeit PSO, TPPP’s, ISO’s, Financial Services companies e.g. WFS and bank sponsorships) with strong alignment to the Absa BU Product clusters as relationship owners.
• In close collaboration with BU 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

Accountability: Relationship Management and Industry representation

• 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 (EB, RB, CIB).
• 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.
• Regular performance engagements, reporting and assessments.
• 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 Management (IRM) teams in order to maintain and track the integrity of payment and settlement transactions across the value chain.

Accountability: Reporting, Analytics and Insights

• 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
• 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.

Accountability: Financial Management

• 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.

Education and Experience Required

• 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