M-KOPA is seeking:
Position Title: Payments Analyst
Location: Nairobi HQ
Position Start: As Soon As Possible
Reporting to: Head of Data
Overall Purpose: This objective of this position is to ensure that all payments are accurately processed in a timely fashion.
About M-KOPA Solar: M-KOPA Solar, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, is the global leader of "pay-as-you-go" energy for off-grid customers.
Since its commercial launch in October 2012, M-KOPA has connected more than 200,000 homes in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda to solar power, and is now adding over 500 new homes each day.
The success of M-KOPA (M= mobile, KOPA= to borrow) stems from making solar products affordable to low-income households on a pay-per-use installment plan.
Customers acquire solar systems for a small deposit and then purchase daily usage "credits" for US $0.45, or less than the price of traditional kerosene lighting.
After one year of payments customers own their solar systems outright and can upgrade to more power.
All revenues are collected in real-time via mobile money systems (such as M-PESA in Kenya) and embedded GSM sensors in each solar system allow M-KOPA to monitor real time performance and regulate usage based upon payments.
This connected design means that M-KOPA is processing vast amounts of data (i.e. over 10,000 mobile payments per day) via the company's proprietary cloud platform, M-KOPAnet.
As of May 2015 M-KOPA employs over 650 full time staff across East Africa and sells through a network of 1,000 direct sales agents. It has also commenced licensing its technology to partners in other markets.
M-KOPA has been recognised for its pioneering business mode and scale, notably winning the 2015 Zayed Future Energy Prize, being selected as the top New Energy Pioneer at the 2014 Bloomberg New Energy Finance awards and earning the 2013 FT/IFC Excellence in Sustainable Finance Award.
Role Profile
Key Accountabilities
Planning & Organization
- Proactively update the payments-affecting activities calendar and implement all processes necessary to mitigate risk
- Produce regular housekeeping reports to allow for an accurate measure of the status of both successful and failed transactions and timely view of customer and agents affecting issues at any point in time; highlighting any exceptions to the supervisor.
Customer Excellence: Internal/External Customer Engagement & Relationship Management
- Coordinate with Finance (accounts receivables, VAT and revenue) to ensure timely and accurate financial booking, reporting and reconciliations.
- Coordinate and work closely with all payment partner channels in resolving any outstanding unidentified and un-reconciled payments and timely escalation of potential errors.
- Work closely with internal and external IT Operations in ensuring timely resolution of payment related activities – batch processing/uploads, report extracts, replications, etc.
- Conduct reconciliation of customer payments made out through the channel in a timely manner.
- Manage timely and accurate application of payments and top ups to the customer account
- Conduct timely reporting and regular escalation of key customer affecting issues to the supervisor
- Conduct root cause analysis and resolve simple to medium complexity customer facing problems across numerous processes and systems
People Excellence: Learning & Growth
- Provide ongoing guidance and support to other business users and team members on payments.
- Develop and agree with the supervisor on plans to continue build own skills and knowledge.
- Keep build and improve skills that may enhance the operation activities from finance prospective for this area.
Process Excellence: Operational Efficiency & Risk Management
- Recognize, propose and drive enhancements to ensure weaknesses/gaps are addressed in the payment processes and systems
- Assist in the development of test cases/scenarios for any changes, additions or enhancements to payment processing and reconciliations
- Perform User Acceptance Testing on any changes, developments and additions of payment channels
- Perform continuous analysis to seek and implement improvements in the payment reconciliation processes the efficient use of resources
- Assist the supervisor in the definition & documentation of all relevant business processes for payment reconciliations
Incumbent Requirements
- Good understanding of accounting principles; best practices and procedures
- Comfortable working with people at senior levels
- Strong communication/negotiation skills
- Strong analytical and presentation skills
- Strong Excel skills
- Ability to manage own work load and meet aggressive deadlines and deliverables
- Persistence with problem solving and solution recommendation
- Outcome Focused and Result Oriented
- Excellent interpersonal and business writing skills
- Experience of working in a complex business environment
- Strong understanding of IT systems and quality assurance processes
- Ability to adapt to changing priorities, workload and tasks
- Attention to detail
- Ability to work well in a team environment under demanding and stressful conditions
- Fluency in English & Swahili
Education:
- Bachelor’s Degree in Finance or Accounting, or its equivalent
- Professional Accountancy Certification (CPA(K) or ACCA)
Remuneration: Competitive covering a monthly salary, performance bonus and medical benefits reflective of the candidate’s experience and skills.
To Apply: To apply, send an updated detailed copy of your CV and a cover letter expressing why you feel you would be an excellent candidate for the role to careers@m-kopa.com with the subject EV-DPA-615
Deadline for applications is 3 PM 9th June 2015
Please Note: Due to the large number of applications received by us, we regret that you will not be contacted unless you are short listed for the post and invited for an interview.
Therefore, if you have not heard from M-KOPA within 4 weeks of the date of the deadline your application, you should assume that you have not been successful on this occasion.
This measure has been taken in the interests of efficiency and cost effectiveness and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
