Recon & FinOps Manager
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Sep 25, 2026. First seen by Alion on Sep 9, 2026. Mama Money scores B on the Alion truth index.
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.
As our Recon & FinOps Manager you will:
- 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.
Qualifications & Experience:
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.