Recon & FinOps Manager

Mamamoney; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Job summary

Mama Money in Cape Town is seeking a Recon & FinOps Manager to own daily reconciliation across corridors and currencies, ensure funds settle accurately and on time, and spot issues early.

You’ll partner with Treasury, Tech Ops and FX Trader to automate workflows, build monitoring, and scale finance operations through smarter automation and data-driven insights.

Qualifications

• Completed Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field.
• 4+ years of relevant experience in payment operations, reconciliations, or financial operations — ideally in fintech, payments, or financial services.
• Hands-on experience using AI tools (e.g. Claude) to build automated assessments, workflows, or alerting systems — non‑negotiable for this role.
• Strong Excel skills: comfortable with large data sets, schedules, and building automated reporting.

Responsibilities

• Reconciling partner balances related to transactions, their statuses and settlement thereof (inward and outward flows).
• Analysis of all transactional, aggregator and pay-in-partner fees.
• All cross-border payment reconciliations (inward and outward payments).
• Resolve unreconciled items through problem-solving and in-depth investigation.
• Provide balance sheet and accounting support via aggregator reporting to the accounting team.
• Prepare daily variance reports and ensure variances are resolved within management timelines.
• Suggest and implement process enhancements, including automation of manual functions.
• Design and implement a recon roadmap focused on automation of financial and transactional recon procedures.
• Oversee manual wallet adjustments, including deposits, reversals and refunds.
• Ensure manual adjustments and money movements have valid business reasons and proper approvals.
• Oversee operational integrity of manual customer bank account adjustments.
• Monitor daily money movements and exceptions, escalating issues as appropriate.
• Work with Data/Technology to build automated recons using partner and internal data.
• Provide month-end schedules and documentation for manual adjustments and transfers.
• Assess impact of new products/partners and ensure clear reconciliation points and approvals.

Skills

FinOps experience

Reconciliation

Data analysis

AI tools experience

Excel mastery

Power BI

SQL

Attention to detail

Education

Bachelor's degree in Accounting/Finance

Tools

Excel

Power BI

SQL

Claude / AI tools

Job description

Who we are:

Mama Money is a growth-stage fintech on a mission to improve the financial lives of migrants and underserved communities across Africa and beyond. What started in 2015 as a cross-border payments service has grown into a multi-product financial platform. We give people the tools to send, save, and manage money — on their own terms, at a socially fair price.

Mama HQ is in beautiful Cape Town, South Africa. We're 158 people strong (and counting), representing 19 countries across Africa, Asia, the UK, and Europe. From remittances to a growing range of financial products, everything we build is in service of people who deserve better. Our culture reflects that same commitment. We look after our team the way we want them to look after our customers. "Just be lekker!" means we trust our talented, diverse people to do what's right and make it happen — simply and with heart.

We've earned a few accolades, built lasting partnerships, and grown our reach in ways we're proud of. We've had good times and tough times, but our focus has never shifted. People over profit, always.

As our Recon & FinOps Manager, you'll be the engine room behind how money actually moves through Mama Money. You'll own the daily reconciliation of payments and aggregator flows across multiple corridors and currencies, make sure funds are settled accurately and on time, and be the first to spot when something looks off. This is a hands‑on, detail-driven role at the intersection of payments, operations, and data — you'll work closely with our Treasury team, Tech Ops, and our FX Trader to keep the money moving smoothly, day in and day out.

You'll bring a data-driven mindset to everything you touch: building smarter reconciliation and monitoring workflows, spotting anomalies through analysis rather than manual review alone, and helping the finance operations function scale through automation rather than headcount.

• Responsible for reconciling partner balances related to transactions, their statuses and settlement thereof (this includes inward and outward transaction flows).
• Responsible for analysis of all transactional, aggregator and pay-in-partner fees.
• Responsible for all cross-border payment reconciliations (inward and outward payments).
• Resolving unreconciled items through problem-solving and in-depth investigation.
• Balance sheet and accounting assistance, in the form of aggregator reporting to the accounting team.
• Preparation of daily variance reports and ensuring variances are resolved within the timeframe set by Management
• Suggesting and implementing process enhancements/efficiencies. This includes finding ways to automate and streamline manual functions.
• Design and implement a recon roadmap across the companies, focused on automation of all financial and transactional recon procedures
• FinOps Experience: Oversee manual wallet adjustments, including deposit allocations, reversals and refunds
• Ensure manual adjustments and money movements have a valid business reason, complete supporting evidence, appropriate approval
• Oversee the operational integrity of manual customer bank account adjustments
• Monitor daily internal money movements and customer-account exceptions, escalating material, aged or recurring issues promptly to Finance, Treasury, Operations, Compliance or Technology as appropriate
• Strengthen the requirement to work closely with Data/Technology to build automated/custom recons using partner data and internal transaction data
• Provide Accounting with complete month‑end schedules and supporting documentation for manual adjustments, internal transfers, customer bank account balances, suspense items and outstanding exceptions.
• Assess the impact of new products, partners and process changes before implementation, ensuring that money‑movement flows, approval requirements, reconciliation points and exception handling are clearly defined.
• Drive root‑cause remediation and automation to reduce manual adjustments, prevent repeat exceptions through Product improvements
• Produce regular FinOps reporting on adjustment volumes and values, aged exceptions, unallocated funds, refunds, control breaches to reduce operational risk.

• Completed Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance, or a related field.
• 4+ years of relevant experience in payment operations, reconciliations, or financial operations — ideally in fintech, payments, or financial services.
• Demonstrable, hands‑on experience using AI tools (e.g. Claude, or similar) to build automated assessments, workflows, or alerting systems — non‑negotiable for this role.
• Strong Excel skills: comfortable with large data sets, schedules, and building automated or templated reporting.
• Exposure to data analysis, dashboarding, or process automation tools (e.g. Power Query, Power BI, SQL, or similar) is a strong advantage.
• Exposure to a multi‑entity or multi‑currency environment, ideally in fintech or financial services.
• Experience working with payment aggregators, gateways, or banking partners is a strong advantage.
• High attention to detail with the ability to manage competing deadlines in a fast‑paced environment.

Why Mama?

At Mama Money, we build products that help people do more with their money, from sending money home, to saving, to accessing money in ways that feel safe & simple. The work we do matters because it helps real people in real ways every day.

We care about making life easier for our customers. We’re not afraid to give things a go, and we take ownership of what we do. We keep learning, support each other, and stay focused on what matters most.

If you’re looking for meaningful work and a team that cares about what they’re building, Mama Money could be the right place for you.

Mama’s values:

Making it easier for customers

Give it a go

Just own it