Every time a customer makes a payment, someone must make sure the money moves exactly as it should. That’s where SeerBit’s Settlement and Reconciliation Officer come in. For our blog piece this week, we chat with Ojelabi Taiwo Daniel, who shares how he ensures merchants get their settlements on time, tackles transaction mismatches, and helps build trust in every payment processed.
Can you kindly introduce yourself?
My name is Ojelabi Taiwo Daniel. I'm the Settlement and Reconciliation Officer at SeerBit. My role involves reconciliation of transactions, ascertaining the authenticity of those transactions and ensuring that all transactions are properly accounted for, balanced and are settled. After this, settlement is raised to pay the merchants for the transactions.
Being a settlement and reconciliation officer means that I must ascertain the worth of the transactions that were performed daily to prevent the organization from financial risk. We’ve had experiences of fraudulent transactions. So, if reconciliation is not being carried out properly, the organisation will be exposed in that kind of situation.
Well, that seem very extensive. Can you just walk us through the daily activities?
In starting my day, the first thing I do is to get the transaction report of the previous day. I get these reports internally and externally from our dashboard and other platforms and carry out a check on those reports to ascertain the authenticity of all transactions - settlement is raised for all successful transactions.
I check the successful transactions internally and check what the external parties provide to be sure that both reports are the same because they must be the same in terms of number of transactions and in amount. With that, I’m able to determine and ascertain settlement due for each merchant. Then, a settlement is raised after reconciliation has been done.
So, reconciliation comes first, which is to confirm and make sure that the two reports that you are working with speak to the same thing. Then the settlement is raised for those merchants because settlement is on T+1 policy, meaning that the transaction of yesterday, the payment is received today.
You mentioned that your work involves only successful transactions. Am I right?
Yes.
So, you have no business with failed transactions whatsoever? There's nothing you do in reconciling that?
For failed transactions, we can have scenarios: One is that the transaction failed from both the issuer’s end and from our end as well. This means the transaction was not successful at all. The other scenario is that the transaction is successful on the issuer’s end but failed on our end. The transaction in this case will give rise to a chargeback or refund.
So, how important would you say settlement is in SeerBit’s operations?
Let me define the word settlement. Settlement refers to transactions that occurs between two or more parties, where one has fulfilled their obligation and it involves the transfer of an asset from one party to another after a transaction has been performed.
At SeerBit, we ensure seamless settlement, meaning that for every transaction that is performed successfully, we make sure that our merchants are settled. We operate on a T plus one basis, meaning transactions that were performed yesterday, merchants get their settlement today. We make sure that our customers get their settlement from the previous day’s transactions first thing in the morning, because they are our top priority.
Alright. Thank you very much for that. So, how do you, how do you ensure accuracy in your reports as the reconciliation officer?
The first thing I do is to carry out a check using Excel. I've established the fact that I'm working with two reports, so I use Excel to confirm the accuracy of those reports, and I must be able to identify the outlier, such as failed transactions. Based on my knowledge of Excel, I use some of its functions to capture those differences. Once those differences have been captured, I raise them with the necessary teams to confirm reason for failure.
For instance, if we have a failed transaction but it was successful at the Issuer, I need to confirm the cause of it, to enable us properly to address any disputes that may arise from such cases.
So, I've been able to maintain accuracy by keeping thorough record of every transaction and the report that we have on each one.
So, in a situation where SeerBit reports or records don't tally with the partner records, how do you reconcile such situations?
We have scenarios like that where both reports don't tally. One of the reasons can be due to a technical glitch, like I mentioned earlier or due to an error. This is usually addressed through internal channels and rectified.
So, your role as the settlement and reconciliation officer seems to be one where you're likely to face many challenges. What would you say are the most common challenges that you've faced in your role and how do you resolve them?
As the settlement and reconciliation officer, one of the common challenges I face is a situation where a transaction is not captured end to end. It may be both internal and external. Internally means transactions that are captured by the Issuer, but they were not captured on our own end. I raise it with the appropriate channels because for a transaction to be successful, it must be captured both internally and externally.
What I do over time is, once an issue occurs, I follow through and document the process of resolving the issue, to have a record or an audit trail in case such a situation happens again. That way, I know how I can resolve it, and then try to determine how to prevent this issue from happening again.
This is how I've been able to manage issues over time, in most cases.
Given that your role involves handling customers’ financial data, which are of course very sensitive, how do you ensure data security and confidentiality?
We work in a financial ecosystem, and we have regulators, one of which is CBN. I make sure I adhere to every data protection rules and regulations by ensuring that I protect my personal laptop with a password to prevent external party or someone that is not authorized from gaining access to the information at my disposal because this information is customer information that is confidential.
Also, all my reports are downloaded and passworded. So even if you have access to my computer, it will be difficult for you to open these reports. I also maintain audit trail monitoring. All settlement processes I handle are logged daily and are traceable, to ensure easy access, so that even in my absence if someone else (from the relevant department) needs to access it, there is a folder in which I drop all that information.
These are some of the different ways I ensure that customers or merchant information are protected.
Let's talk about you once again. What inspired you to go into the financial industry, particularly within fintech?
I have a background in accounting. Yeah, I'm a graduate of accounting from Kwara State University. So, this piqued my interest because it's all about financial data.
I worked as a settlement translation officer with a bank before joining fintech. I chose fintech because I believe in fintech I can do more.
It was the banks that created opportunities for fintech companies. There are gaps within the banking system that banks could not solve that created this opportunity for the fintech to grow, in terms of payment and collections.
How online transactions are being tracked, how they are being collected, how they are being processed and the payments, generally. This made me realise there's more to do than what I was doing in the banking sector. So, I wanted to learn more and explore, and it has given me the opportunity to join SeerBit.
So, yes, SeerBit has helped me widen my knowledge about the financial industry. Like the word fintech being the combination of finance and technology. The application of technology does make the process of finance much more seamless because anything that involves money needs to be handled carefully.
SeerBit has given me the platform and has opened me up in diverse ways. Over time, I've become an expert in this role as a settlement and reconciliation officer. SeerBit has contributed immensely to my development in this and I'm grateful for that.
You sound like a very proud SeerBit staff. So, what would you say is your proudest moment at SeerBit so far?
When I joined, I was an assistant dispute and reconciliation officer. So over time, the opportunity was created, and I was called on to become the settlement and reconciliation officer. I knew that it was going to be more tasking, and it was. But overtime, I have learnt so much about reconciliation, and settlement. So, the proudest moment for me is moving from a dispute assistant to a full reconciliation and settlement officer.
What advice would you give to someone who was seeking to go into settlement and reconciliation?
My advice to anyone that would like to go into the reconciliation space, or anything you want to do in general is that you need to know what you want. Have a goal or a target. Once you know what you want, the next thing is to find the way to get it and go for it.
Let me end with this quote that says, “You will become what you want to become, if you determine to become what you wish to become”.
My advice is that through determination, hard work and prayers you can become whatsoever you wish to become in life.
Thank you very much for your time, Taiwo. It was a pleasure doing this with you
The pleasure is mine. Thank you. Bye.