Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Timeline
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Mike Bowles

Mike Bowles

Payments Optimization Manager
Cape Town

Summary

Dynamic Senior Payments Optimization Manager with a proven track record at Adumo, specializing in payment stack optimization and customer experience enhancement. A critical thinker, I developed innovative platforms and drove KPIs to ensure operational excellence, showcasing expertise in ACI Postilion and advanced data analytics. Passionate about delivering impactful solutions in fast-paced environments.

Overview

26
26
years of professional experience

Work History

Senior Payments Optimization Manager

Lesaka
Cape Town
03.2025 - Current
  • Assumed the same responsibilities I had in my earlier role as the Senior Payments Optimization Manager under Adumo.

Senior Payments Optimization Manager

Adumo
Cape Town
07.2019 - 03.2025
  • Assumed the same functional responsibilities I had in my earlier role as Enterprise Solution Architect with the additional responsibilities being:
  • Defined, monitored and reported on the key performance indicators (KPIs) such as acceptance rates, decline codes and dispute rates (e.g. double debits, unadvised transactions) to executive leadership.
  • Identified underlying issues and drove the remedial actions thereof to ensure that these KPIs remained within the acceptable threshold.
  • Improved customer experience not only through product focus, but also by optimizing internal operational processes.
  • Acted as the subject matter expert on payments - providing strategic input for roadmap planning, vendor selection, and product design.
  • Stepped in to manage severity 1 outages, where third line support are unable to resolve within SLA.
  • Standouts: Developed a new Giftcard / Loyalty store-of-value platform to replace the incumbent system.
  • Developed a platform for the Innervation Rewards Business for the loading of funds onto a prepaid VISA card issued by Paymentology – equipped with both a head office (employer) and customer (employee) portal.
  • Developed a platform for the “MyReceipts” company which on request of the POS, rendered an electronic receipt which was either / or SMSéd / emailed to the customer. The system built up a profile of the customer based on their cards (some masked) used across the Innervation merchant base. In this way one could track their spending behaviour and push targeted campaigns.
  • Built a system to allocate virtual prepaid VISA cards via SMS to customers. This was built for the Innervation Rewards business and used by an employer (typically large mining companies) to reward their employees. This was later replaced by a Self Service Web Portal integrated into Paymentology.
  • Devices the Adumo P2PE schema for the encoding and encryption of card detail.
  • Developed an Android App (Adumo App) – essentially wrapping the PAX payment app (BroadPOS) – to enable the PAX device to process both standalone transactions and integrated transactions from POS i.e. serve as both a terminal and PED.
  • Developed a centralized application which Brokers the integrated transaction processing between the POS and the PAX device. This enabled the POS and payment device to sit on different networks and is facilitated using the WebSocket protocol.
  • Developed an Android App (Adumo Pulse) – which auto configures the PAX terminal base and manages the device’s communication channels. It fails over the device between WIFI and Mobile (SIM1 / SIM2) and vice versa based on the internet availability and strength of signal. It only fails over (to Mobile) the specific set of endpoints required to process transactions, all of the time ensuring that the WIFI channel remains open for integrated transaction processing.

Enterprise Solutions Architect

Innervation
Cape Town
05.2012 - 07.2019
  • I performed a number of prior roles in my tenure - Senior Technical Manager ( Sept 2014 - Sept 2018), Technical Project Manager (May 2012 - Sept 2014)
  • Owned and executed technical projects end-to-end, driving all SDLC phases including requirements analysis, system design, development, QA, deployment, and ongoing support. Delivered regular progress updates to the executive team and conducted product demonstrations for product owners and technical stakeholders.
  • Designed and managed the development of scalable, secure, compliant and high-performance enterprise solutions across cloud and on-prem environments. This entailed collaberating with internal resources (Product Owners and developers), 3rd party vendors and external partners. Engineering teams were engaged to assess technical feasibility and identify infrastructure dependencies.
  • Produced detailed technical documentation to support cross-functional teams, including TSDs, test packs, release notes, and operational handover guides.
  • Delivered training, technical guidance, and ongoing support to onboarding and support teams to ensure effective solution adoption, monitoring, and stabilization.
  • Provided technical leadership and mentorship to project managers, business analysts, test analysts and support engineers - fostering a culture of high performance and continuous learning.
  • Provided architecture oversight across multiple concurrent projects, ensuring adherence to enterprise standards, security policies, and compliance regulations.
  • Standouts: Enhanced the Traderoot EFT Switch to serve as a transactional aggregation platform for VAS services such as Airtime, Electricity, Lotto, etc. This was named the VAS Platform, with Pick n Pay being the first customer. This was replaced some three years later by an in-house developed system named InnerCORE.
  • Developed an in-store application to process VAS transactions (including gift cards and loyalty) – named InnerEDGE. As the bulk of the functionality (e.g. SAF, recon markup files) was inherent in the application, we were able to reduce the time it took for the channels (POS, eCommerce) to integrate by 80% and stabilize the instore processing of VAS transactions. The application pushes all declined transactions to a central database in order to provide a view of local / in-store declines.
  • Automated a number of the operational functions e.g. BIN file creation, ETL type processes, database housekeeping etc.
  • Developed the performance testing strategy – together with the environment to support the stress testing of all of our platforms.
  • Developed a system to batch settle transactions (pre-auths) for our car rental customers.
  • Implemented the Traderoot Card Management (CMS) and Issuing platform (UIP) for bSmart (previously Cape Consumers). This included the integration of the bSmart CRM system into the platform and the implementation of a USSD utility for card PIN management.

Technical Project Manager

EasyPay
Cape Town
11.2008 - 05.2012
  • Managed multiple EFT and VAS related projects from inception to deployment, adhering to the SDLC methodology.
  • Formulated and documented both the Business (BRS) and Technical Requirements (TDS) documents.
  • Liaised at the senior level, both internally and with external customers and vendors. These are Tier 1 retailers (PnP, Clicks), channel vendors (POS, MPOS, eCommerce, Mobile), ACS (Postilion Switch), the "Big Four" SA banks, and other payment and VAS service providers.
  • Performed all EMVCo Level 3 certifications.
  • Standouts: Upgrade of the Postilion switch to a PCI-DSS compliant version, implementation of Postilion Active-Active (redundancy), integration of the Clicks Group into the Postilion Switch, performing the first L3 certification of the NET1/Prism EMV kernel, and deployment of that kernel to 8,000+ Verifone PEDs.

Technical Project Manager

Citibank
London
04.1999 - 11.2008
  • Initially employed as a Problem Manager at Citibank's European Data Centre, I pivoted into Windows System Engineering. My first six years were based in the UK, but I worked extensively in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and India. I was located in Germany for my last three years, working as a Technical Project Manager on special projects before returning to South Africa.
  • Standouts: Rolling out Windows 2000 with desktop hardware replacement across Citibank Europe, building the server and network infrastructure for a newly established call center in India, implementing an on-demand electronic form solution for the German Consumer business.

Education

National Diploma - Marketing & Sales

Cape Technikon
Cape Town, South Africa
04.2001 -

High School Diploma -

Bergvliet High School
Cape Town, South Africa
04.2001 -

Skills

Soft: Solutionist, critical thinker, attentive to detail, enthusiastic, determined, perseverant, excellent communicator (verbal and written)

Payment Stack: ACI Postilion, Traderoot PSP

Issuing Stack: Traderoot CMS and UIP

HSM: Prism TSM-500

Message Protocols: Postilion TermAPPISO, Postilion PostBridge (ISO8583), Postilion Base24

Payment Devices: Verifone, Ingenico, Newland, PAX

VAS: Mobile/QR Payments, Giftcard, Loyalty, Prepaid Services, eReceipting

OS: Windows, Linux, Android

APIs: SOAP XML, RESTFUL JSON

Database: MS SQL, MySQL, PostGRES

Data Analytics: ELK stack (ElasticSearch, Logstash, Kibana), Graylog, Prometheus, Talend Open Studio, MS Excel (advanced)

Design: Visio, Draw-io, Confluence, MS Word

Test Utilities: TestRail, JIRA, SOAPUI, jMeter, PostMan, Blazemeter, EMV UL for L3 certs, Quality Center, Performance Centre

Cloud: AWS

Timeline

Senior Payments Optimization Manager

Lesaka
03.2025 - Current

Senior Payments Optimization Manager

Adumo
07.2019 - 03.2025

Enterprise Solutions Architect

Innervation
05.2012 - 07.2019

Technical Project Manager

EasyPay
11.2008 - 05.2012

National Diploma - Marketing & Sales

Cape Technikon
04.2001 -

High School Diploma -

Bergvliet High School
04.2001 -

Technical Project Manager

Citibank
04.1999 - 11.2008

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Mike BowlesPayments Optimization Manager