Key Account Manager

How you'll help us achieve it

We’re looking for a Key Account Manager who is commercially driven, data-oriented, and passionate about building strong, long-term partnerships. In this role, you’ll be responsible for owning and growing a portfolio of strategic corporate payment partners, driving their performance and identifying opportunities to expand their use of Wave’s products.

You’ll combine relationship management, commercial strategy, and operational problem-solving to ensure our partners are successful. You’ll also lead and develop a team of Account Supervisors, working closely with cross-functional teams to deliver against our growth objectives and continuously improve the partner experience.

In this role you'll; 

Own and grow a portfolio of corporate partners

• Manage a portfolio of key corporate payment partners, and act as their main business and operational point of contact.
• Engage closely with partner stakeholders to build strong relationships, understand their business, and identify blockers to growth.
• Run regular business reviews with your partners: performance against targets, product roadmap, open issues.
• Identify growth opportunities and cross-sell new payment products across your portfolio.
• Detect early churn signals  volume decline, drop in unique payers, inactive stores  and act on them before they turn into losses.
• Build and execute a growth roadmap per account, sequenced by cycle objectives, with clear owners and deadlines.

Drive commercial performance

• Lead the analysis of merchant performance: identify what is working and what is not, and take action to ensure a high standard of service and sustainable growth.
• Prepare and defend pricing proposals: document current volume, growth commitments and competitive pressure, and structure fee reductions as volume-conditioned tiers rather than flat concessions.
• Drive in-field activation at partner locations, staff training, point-of-sale visibility and branding materials  so that signed partners actually transact.
• Onboard new partners onto our standard payment products, from commercial agreement to first transactions, and own their ramp-up to target volume.

Ensure operational excellence

• Ensure high-quality customer support by advocating for partners' needs and resolving issues related to our products, including refunds, settlements and funding requests.
• Act as first-level resolution for partner incidents, coordinating with Finance, Support and Product until closure.
• Work closely with our Risk & Fraud team to minimize fraud cases and threats to the security of payment partners.
• Monitor your team portfolio for abnormal activity, unexplained payer spikes, atypical transaction patterns  and escalate promptly.
• Identify priority areas and develop solutions to Wave's payments liquidity needs nationwide, with a focus on merchant expansion.

Work with data

• Track your portfolio on our dashboards, run a weekly pulse (wow), and turn what you see into a short list of prioritized actions.
• Report clearly and consistently on portfolio health, open actions and risks to your Lead and to cross-functional stakeholders.

Lead your team

• Manage, coach and grow a team of account supervisors: set priorities, run regular 1:1s, and hold a high performance bar.
• Provide guidance and feedback that strengthen the knowledge and skills your team needs to meet company OKRs.
• Develop playbooks and workflows for your team, and keep training material for products, campaigns and features up to date.
• Work closely with internal teams  Sales, Admin, Corporate Support, Finance, Compliance, Marketing, Product,  to align on critical goals and implement strategies.
• Help shape Wave's global strategy by sharing insights and learnings from the Côte d'Ivoire team's experience.
• Lead by living Wave's values, and ensure they're deeply ingrained within your team

Key details

• Location: Abidjan
• Work authorization in Côte d'Ivoire is required. 
• 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 generous parental leave policies (26 weeks for mothers and 4 weeks for fathers) and subsidized childcare when you return to work.
• We help you live your fullest life now! We subsidize gym memberships and fitness classes.
• Airtime reimbursement.
• Free food and a beautiful office space.

Requirements

• A degree in general management, sales, project management, finance, international relations, business management, or a comparable field. 
• At least 5 years of experience in a similar position (ideally in an international company, a bank, a mobile money company, or similar) with a minimum of 2 years experience at a managerial position.
• Relevant experience either in operations, sales, support, or distribution.
• Fluency in French 
• Good level in English - this role will regularly interact with non-French speakers.
• Proven track record in delivering a great customer experience.
• Ability to conduct duties discreetly and impartially.

You might be a good fit if you

• Have experience managing team management.
• Are as comfortable in a meeting room making a presentation as you are in preparing partnership documents in French/English. 
• Are enthusiastic about Wave's mission and eager to do what needs to be done to accomplish it.
• Are a team player, but you can also work independently.
• Are result-oriented, with an engaging personality and an excellent ability to build trust with both external and internal stakeholders.
• Are able to think creatively and work proactively to achieve challenging targets.
• 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.
• Adjust quickly to changing conditions and any environment.
• Have excellent oral and written communication with good interpersonal skills.