M-Pesa Africa - Executive Head of Business Payments at Safaricom Kenya

About the Role

As the leader of the Business Payments Unit (BPU), you will be driving the Business Payments and Acquisition strategy for M-Pesa Africa. You will be responsible for the overall BPU product development roadmap and the roll out of solutions across all the M-Pesa Africa markets. 

You will play a pivotal role in enabling over 60 million customers to pay for goods and services with M-Pesa, and in growing the base of businesses that accept and use M-Pesa in their operations. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

Lead the BPU strategy and team development

• Develop and update the overall strategy in close collaboration with the markets and senior management
• Ensure buy-in from senior managements and market heads
• Translate the strategy into key partnerships, products and initiatives
• Build and lead the team to successfully achieve the set-out targets
• Driving growth in Enterprise account penetration and usage across collections and disbursements use cases.

Managing Local Payments 

• Expand Merchant  Acquisition,   especially   outside   of   Kenya,   through   the development of compelling value propositions such as mini-apps, Financial Services and other VAS;
• Growing the penetration of the “Lipa” (Pay by M-Pesa) use case within the customer base, focusing on in-store payment and online payments;
• Driving online acceptance of M-Pesa as a payment method, both with global merchants as well with local online merchants;
• Rolling out digital product such as the Merchant app, Portal, Open APIs, and others across all our markets;
• Managing the road map to make M-pesa a universal payment player by rolling out the Payment as a Service strategy across all markets;
• Building the Developer ecosystem to ensure that M-Pesa becomes the Dominant Fintech ecosystem in Africa.

Managing Global Payments

• Enable open API capabilities and Features to enable M-Pesa consumers to make payments to global merchant via M-Pesa App and USSD from their M-Pesa wallet;
• Lead the recruitment and negotiations of partnerships with global Merchants, global PSPs, and Leading Payment solution providers to integrate M-Pesa payment capabilities as a check out option;
• Deliver Key strategic partnership objective with Visa, PayPal, Microsoft and other players;
• Enable M-pesa users to access technology to make payments anywhere in the world including Tokenization, AI, Digital Wallets, Virtual Cards, Tap to Pay, blockchain;
• Drive Innovation on new payment capabilities and value added services to m-Pesa payments Globally.

Partnership Management 

• Manage strategic partnerships with key payment and technology companies across the world;
• Develop and maintain relationships with vendors, suppliers, contractors, and other third parties to ensure that both sides are getting what they need from the relationship;
• Identify new partnership opportunities and develop proposals outlining how a partnership could benefit both parties;
• Negotiate terms of the agreement and ensure compliance with legal requirements;
• Manage the operationalization of the partnerships to ensure effective communication and collaboration.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree required, a Master’s degree in a related field preferred;
• An upwards of 10 years of professional experience with at least 5 years in digital payments and acquiring merchants
• Passion for, and commitment to driving mobile money growth and innovation
• Extensive experience leading commercial teams
• Expertise in developing partnerships with third parties
• Experience leading product roadmaps and working in agile squads on product development
• International experience and multicultural sensitivity