Regional Digital Payments Analyst

United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) is the UN’s capital investment agency for the world’s least developed countries (LDCs). It creates new opportunities for poor people and their communities by increasing access to inclusive finance and investment capital. Established by the General Assembly in 1966 and with headquarters in New York, UNCDF is an autonomous UN organization affiliated with UNDP. 

Based on UNCDF, the Better Than Cash Alliance (BTCA) is a partnership of 80 governments, companies, and international organizations that accelerates the transition from cash to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals by: 

• Advocating for the transition from cash to digital payments in a way that advances financial inclusion and promotes responsible digital finance. 
• Catalyzing the development of inclusive digital payments ecosystems in member countries to reduce costs, increase transparency, advance financial inclusion-- particularly for women-- and drive inclusive growth.
• Conducting research and sharing the knowledge and experiences of our members to inform strategies for making the transition. 

Billions of dollars in cash payments and transfers are made daily in emerging and developing economies, including payment of salaries, social welfare, relief, payments to suppliers, remittances, etc. The problems with these cash payments include a lack of transparency, accountability, and security, as well as inefficiency. Individuals who receive cash payments are often part of the 1.7 billion excluded from the formal financial sector. This means they are excluded from access to a range of appropriate and affordable financial services to help them save safely, take advantage of economic opportunities and reduce their vulnerability to risk. 

Shifting these payments from cash to digital has the potential to improve the lives of people on low-income, particularly women, while giving governments, the development community, and the private sector a more transparent, time and cost-efficient, and often safer means of disbursing payments. 

The Better Than Cash Alliance Team’s Core Values are the following: 

• Achieving together 
• Striving for excellence 
• Service-oriented 
• Results oriented more information on BTCA, please visit the website: http://www.betterthancash.org/

In Asia and the Pacific, the Alliance has several members which include the governments, international corporates, international development organizations, industry bodies and civil society organizations.

The Better Than Cash Alliance is looking to hire an Asia Regional Digital Payments Analyst to support the Head of Asia Pacific Region and the Southeast Asia Lead on the delivery of advisory, advocacy and action research services to Alliance members in Asia and the Pacific.

The successful candidate will be office-based and work under the supervision of the Head of Asia Pacific Region of the Better Than Cash Alliance. The candidate may be required to be present in-office or for external meetings once or twice a week depending on work requirements.

Under the overall supervision of the Head of Asia Pacific Region, the Analyst will support the implementation of the regional strategy initiatives in the Asia Pacific  member countries which includes the following duties:

Regional Advisory Services 

• Support in designing and delivery of advisory services to catalyze priority regional member efforts to responsibly digitize payments, ensuring that they are efficiently implemented, managed, monitored and evaluated, meeting or exceeding all targets.  Services may include: technical advisory support to specific member initiatives; carrying out digital payments ecosystem diagnostics; policy and strategies development; training workshops for key government officials or business executives with strategic responsibility for payments;
• Take ownership in partnership with the Regional Lead in the design of the Alliance Secretariat priority country strategies incorporating input from the Head of Private Sector, the South East Asia Lead and the Asia Communications Lead, ensuring alignment to the overall Alliance Asia Regional Strategy.
• Drive the implementation of priority countries strategies, ensuring all priority members receive high-quality services in their priority areas and the UN Principles for Responsible Digital Payments are disseminated and embedded in member initiatives and policies.
• Draft, develop and deliver strategy briefings, presentations and communication documents during internal and external meetings, including for Members Services Committee, Editorial and Publication Committee, Executive Committee and Team Meetings when needed.
• Drive successful project management in full compliance of all UNCDF/UNDP rules and regulations in close partnership with the operations and procurement teams to ensure delivery of project milestones.
• Supporting monitoring of key performance indicators of the overall initiatives and strategy across Asia Pacific including keeping the Alliance team abreast of their status, achievements, challenges, opportunities and learnings.

Action Research and Knowledge Management

• Conduct in-depth research on topics related to digital payments, digital financial services, financial inclusion, digital public infrastructure with a focus on specific markets to inform the regional strategy and the drafting of concept notes for in-country initiatives and engagements of new members.
• Support thematic leads in developing workstream strategies with inputs from Asia region members’ perspective.
• Contribute to research and initiatives on frontier topics like Digital Public Infrastructure, Artificial Intelligence, Climate risk adaptation, etc; in the context of adoption of responsible digital payments.
• Contribute to the development of knowledge products (Alliance’s research and advocacy documents and publications) that support the capacity enhancement of members in the Anglophone Africa region and the wider digital payments sector including for companies and business payment streams.
• Pro-actively work with the whole Asia team, and the Communications team to ensure lessons and achievements from digitization initiatives are regularly distilled and documented from all in-country initiatives and initiatives done by partners.
• Keep abreast of members information needs to identify future knowledge and research products that will fill in a gap and provide useful information for members in the region.

Regional and In-country Advocacy 

• Support the Head of Asia Pacific in maintaining and growing relationship with Alliance’s members and partners in Asia. Support engagement, development and execution of regional and in-country advocacy initiatives aiming at driving responsible digitization of payments in Asia at the national and regional level.
• Work with the country members and partners of the Alliance to develop commitments, key messages and sharing of learnings opportunities to scale responsible digitization of payments in Asia.
• Support Regional Leads with relevant research to undertake speaking and representation engagements for the Better Than Cash Alliance where necessary.

Facilitate Knowledge sharing, capacity building and Communications

• Work closely with the Head of Asia Pacific Region and the Asia Communications Lead, regional and country teams, including communications colleagues, to identify and seize advocacy and communication opportunities for the Alliance, including conferences, UN, regional and national events.
• Collaborate in organization of events, webinars, conferences and specialized workshops and other knowledge sharing events as directed by the Head of Asia Pacific region.
• Draft comment pieces, share news and stories from Alliance members on social media and other communications channels, as appropriate.

The incumbent performs other duties within their functional profile as deemed necessary for the efficient functioning of the Office and the Organization.