Account Director - East Africa at Thunes

Reporting to the Head of Account Management Middle East & Africa, the Account Director will be focused on scaling our relationships with our existing large clients including banks, MTO’s, PSPs, wallets & fintechs. You will be responsible for forming deep relationships with these key accounts across East Africa. You will be their trusted advisor for our products and services. Leveraging this relationship, you will provide a world class customer experience for your accounts, driving revenue growth through cross and up sell opportunities.

Responsibilities:

• Relationship Management: Build and maintain strong relationships with clients, serving as their primary point of contact for all payment-related matters. Understand their business needs, objectives, and challenges, and proactively address their concerns.
• Client Retention and Growth: Develop strategies to retain existing clients and foster their growth within the payments space. Identify upselling and cross-selling opportunities, and work with other stakeholders to expand the client portfolio of services.
• Develop account plans and strategies and execute on them to increase revenue and market share
• Work closely with multiple internal functions (e.g. product, sales, compliance, solution delivery and operations) to improve our product and service
• Payment Solutions Consulting: Provide expert advice and guidance to clients on payment solutions. Assist clients in optimizing their payment processes and reducing costs.
• Issue Resolution: Act as a liaison between clients and internal teams, ensuring prompt and effective resolution of any payment-related issues or escalations. Collaborate with technical support, operations, network and compliance teams to address client concerns.
• Performance Monitoring and Reporting: Monitor and analyse key performance indicators (KPIs) for assigned accounts, such as transaction volumes, revenue, and customer satisfaction. Prepare regular reports and presentations for clients and management, highlighting performance trends and recommending improvement strategies.
• Market Research and Competitor Analysis: Stay updated on industry trends, regulatory changes, and emerging technologies in the payments space. Conduct competitor analysis to identify opportunities for product and service differentiation, and contribute to the development of new offerings.
• Ensure excellent communication and internal coordination to roll-out new services taking into factors of market specificity (regulation, competition etc.),
• Training and Support: Conduct training sessions and workshops for clients to educate them about new payment products, features, and industry best practices.
• Provide ongoing support to ensure clients can effectively leverage payment solutions.
• Act as trusted partner ensuring account retention, contractual health, well-being, and maximum satisfaction of clients.
• Ensure all specific reports and records are completed within timeframe, including utilisation of CRM tool with precision.

Skills/Qualifications:

You’re a natural people person who isn’t afraid to get scrappy to solve customer issues; you’re excited to become an expert in the high-growth technology businesses that rely on Thunes; you’re an energized and organized self-starter; you’re highly analytical and have a track record for improving the processes and organizations around you.

• 10+ years’ experience in B2B Account Management/Partnerships in an enterprise business development environment.
• Extensive hands-on partnerships and/or account management experience working with financial institutions & enterprise clients in East Africa
• Track record of top commercial performance in a Payments business with proven ability to grow revenue share  
• Operationally focused, with an ability to methodically grow a live account, coordinating internal teams using planning, metrics, and organizational structures
• Evidence of expertise in CSM (customer success management) with a metric driven, rigorous and programmatic framework approach
• Excellent negotiation skills with the tenacity to drive commercial value in upsell and cross sell scenarios
• Strong decision maker, able to prioritize through competing demands and complex problems
• Ability to manage multiple stakeholders, including compliance, legal, solutions delivery, treasury, and finance
• Driven, flexible, self-motivated, go-getter, able to accept change and with the ability to work at pace in a rapidly growing and changing environment
• Analytical ability to manage complex reporting, pricing, and cost considerations