Card Issuing & Acquiring Manager (1 Position)

Reporting to the Head- Card & Payments, the role holder will be responsible for driving the strategic direction, development and management of the card’s portfolio, across card issuing and acquiring. As the cards’ product owner, the role holder will be responsible for driving card portfolio product innovation, enhancing customer experience for customers and merchants, championing operational excellence across card services, credit and operational risk management for the portfolio and steering the bank’s compliance with scheme regulations and industry standards.

KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Define the vision, roadmap, and requirements for card products, aligning them with the bank’s business objectives.
• Stay abreast of global and regional market trends, continuously evolving the card product strategyy in line with emerging insights, opportunities and threats.
• Drive card products innovation to continuously enhance the bank’s customer value proposition and competitiveness.
• Oversee the end-to-end lifecycle of card products, including but not limited to debit, credit, virtual and prepaid cards.
• Ensure the bank’s product offerings meet scheme, regulatory requirements and industry standards.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver seamless card products enhancements, new products including their go-to-market strategies.
• Leverage Visa programs and incentives to stimulate business growth.
• Be unreasonable about customer experience across our card products and all fulfilment touchpoints including but not limited to ATMs, POSs, and online.
• Monitor customer feedback and market trends to continuously improve product offerings and fulfilment thereof.
• Implement customer retention and loyalty programs to increase product usage and satisfaction.
• Partner with customer experience, business technology and operations to ensure customer queries and issues are attended to and resolved promptly.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure efficient and secure processing of card transactions.
• Manage relationships with schemes, card fulfillment providers vendors, and partners to optimize service delivery.
• Champion risk management and compliance related to card operations.
• Lead the planning and delivery of ongoing internal cross-functional teams upskilling.
• Develop, manage and drive the realization of card portfolio revenue and cost budget.
• Daily monitoring of the card portfolio performance, implementing timely interventions to achieve revenue and profitability targets.
• Conduct financial analysis and reporting to support decision-making.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:

• Bachelor’s Degree preferably in Business, Commerce and/or Management Studies.
• Scheme product, commercial, operations and risk management.
• Solid demonstrable understanding of key product marketing principles.
• 7-8 years’ experience, 5 of which should be in card management incl. operations.
• Strong practical knowledge of schemes incl. Visa and Mastercard compliance requirements and regulations.
• Understanding of key business drivers and ability to drive business output.
• Demonstrated experience interpreting and implementing schemes incl. Visa and Mastercard crule changes.
• Advanced forecasting, pricing and business modelling.
• Good computer knowledge especially spread sheets and databases, word and PowerPoint.
• Familiarity with PCI-DSS, EMV chip technology, 3D Secure, tokenization, contactless payments, and payment security standards.
• Understanding of chargeback management processes and dispute resolution procedures.
• Good interpersonal skills to work with other teams for implementation of activities.
• Business and Industrial awareness.
• Team player and ability to work with minimum supervision.
• Solutions oriented mindset.