Merchant Opening Regional Lead

Abidjan , Côte d'Ivoire

Our mission

We're making Africa the first cashless continent.

In 2017, over half the population in Sub-Saharan Africa had no bank account. That's for good reason—the fees are too high, the closest branch can be miles away, and nobody takes cards. Without access to financial institutions, people are forced to keep their savings under the mattress. Small business owners rely on lenders who charge extortionate rates. Parents spend hours waiting in line to pay school fees in cash.

We're solving this by building financial services that just work: no account fees, instantly available, and accepted everywhere. In places where electricity, water and roads don't always work, you can still send money with Wave. In 2017, we launched a mobile app in Senegal for cash deposit, withdrawal, and peer-to-peer and business payments. Now, we have millions of users across six countries and are growing fast.

Our goal is to make Africa the first cashless continent and that's where you come in...

How you'll help us achieve it

Wave is now the largest financial institution in Senegal, with over 7 million users. And, we’re still in the early days of our product roadmap and potential impact on people’s everyday lives.

We’re looking for a Merchant Opening Regional Lead who will oversee all Wave merchant network acquiring and operations management for the assigned region by supervising all the activities of the Merchant Opening Territory leads, Supervisors, and Openers and liaising with the respective admin teams to attain the set targets in the region.

In this role, you’ll;  

  • Merchant growth
    • Coordinate with the Merchant Opening Territory Leads, Merchant Opening Supervisors, and Merchant Openers to identify opportunities for new merchant locations and acquire merchants according to the set merchant selection criteria and guidelines. 
  • Merchant Contracting
    • Ensure the Merchant Openers recruit merchants in compliance with the legal and policy requirements as per the defined procedure.
    • Make sure all merchants in your region have executed valid contracts and are trained on the contents of the contract (Fees and contract-related) before the merchant signs the contract.
  • Inbounds Processing
    • Ensure all inbounds are processed within the set timeline (5 working days). 
  • Merchant Activation and Training
    • Ensure all merchants are trained and certificated (all products and procedures), including Know Your Customer (KYC) and AML/CTF, as per the defined merchant training procedure and requirements.
    • Deliver supplies and coordinate outlet branding (Branding Officer).
  • Merchant Ongoing Liquidity Management
    • Coordinate the Monitoring of Cash Out/Wire availability at any merchant in liaison with the Agent Management Team and Liquidity Team internally.
  • Risk  Management and Routine Visitation
    • Manage the teams in Monitoring merchant through reports on emerging issues and assessment of the region’s performance.
  • Merchant Churn
    • Coordinate the merchant's identification for closure (per internal procedure), recover Wave items and equipment (if any, like device), and remove branding material. 
  • Be the primary contact person for your region's merchant network acquiring & Wave products.
    • Execute operational excellence, cost management, and compliance with internal policies and regulatory guidelines.
  • Champion excellent customer service
    • Implementation of quality service delivery standards.

Key details

  • Location: San Pedro.
  • Work authorization in Côte d’Ivoire.
  • This is a permanent position.
  • Our salaries are competitive and calculated using a transparent formula.
  • We offer generous health insurance for yourself and your dependents.
  • We support working parents - we offer 26 weeks of parental leave for mothers and 4 weeks for fathers, in addition to subsidized child care when they return to work.
  • Airtime reimbursement.
  • Free food and a beautiful office space.

Requirements

  • Fluency in French and English - this role will interact regularly with non-French speakers.
  • At least 5 years of relevant work experience, specifically managing a network in Côte d’Ivoire, including a minimum of 2  years of experience managing field-based teams (+50 persons).
  • Must have worked and overseen network activities in Côte d’Ivoire.

You might be a good fit if you

  • Are a field person.
  • Have good sales and negotiation skills.
  • Strong management skills and team spirit.
  • Communicate effectively and often, both in writing and in person, to the point of over-communication.
  • Are detail-oriented and seek to achieve excellence in everything you do.
  • Are a self-starter and proactive about achieving ambitious targets.
  • Enjoy owning projects - you're autonomous yet know when to escalate problems.
  • Have built and led strong teams in achieving key results.
  • Adjust quickly to changing priorities.
  • Are tech-savvy: comfortable navigating Excel and onboarding new tools.

Our team

  • We have a rapidly growing in-country team in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, and Uganda, plus remote team members spread across the world.
  • We're deeply passionate about our mission of bringing radically affordable financial services to the people who need them most.
  • We foster autonomy for our employees. You'll own your projects at every stage, from understanding the problem to monitoring your solution in production.
  • We raised the largest Series A in Africa in 2021. Our world-class investors, include Founders Fund, Sequoia Heritage, Stripe, Ribbit Capital, Y Combinator, and Partech Africa.
  • We are on Y Combinator's top companies by revenue.

How to apply

Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English and a cover letter describing your interest in Wave and the role.

We review applications frequently and recommend that you apply to the role that most closely aligns with your skills, experience and career goals.

Wave is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Our mission Since 2014, our Sendwave app has allowed Africans in the US, the UK, and Canada to send money instantly to mobile money wallets in Kenya, Uganda, & Tanzania, saving our users over 70% relative to Western Union and MoneyGram. In 2016, we expanded our scope and began building Wave, a mobile money product for domestic markets in Africa.  The problem: Nearly 60% of adults in sub-Saharan Africa had no bank account. That's for good reason — the fees are too high, the closest branch can be miles away, and most merchants only accept cash. Without access to financial institutions, people are forced to keep their savings under the mattress. Small business owners rely on lenders who charge extortionate rates. Parents spend hours waiting in line to pay school fees in cash.How we're solving it: We're building financial services to work as they should: no account fees, instantly available and accepted everywhere. In places where electricity, water and roads don't always function, we're creating financial infrastructure that "just works." At the end of 2017, we launched a mobile app in Senegal for cash deposit, withdrawal, and peer-to-peer and business payments; in 2019, wwe launched in Cote d'Ivoire. Our goal is to make Africa the first cashless continent. That's where you come in... Who are we? We're a distributed HQ team of ~60 people who are deeply passionate about our mission of bringing great financial services to the people who need them most. We have a Country Office in Senegal with about 70 people and have recently opened another Country Office in Cote d’Ivoire. We’re backed by world-class investors including Khosla Ventures, Founders Fund, Y Combinator, and the cofounders of PayPal. Our values We’re egolessly mission driven We focus ruthlessly on the most important thing We’re embarrassingly honest to stay aligned and move quickly We don’t wait – we live our fullest lives now We maximize our rate of learning We're growing quickly, see our job openings below. If you are interested in roles with our international remittance team (SendWave), see here. 

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