entrepreneurs Clayton Hayward, Paul Carter Brown, Jason Penton and Mike Smits jointly run software development firm Gini Guru, which provides solutions to problems relating to transacting, payments and telecommunications.
About 14 months ago, they took stock of their technical skills and realised that they had excess know-how which they could put towards corporate social investment, says Hayward. This culminated in them co-founding uKheshe (meaning cash in isiZulu), a micro transaction platform that allows its cardholders to pay and get paid by scanning a QR code.
Much like a barcode on a physical product, a QR code is a machine-scanable image, only it can instantly be read by a smartphone. Through this functionality, uKheshe cardholders can send and receive money, anywhere at any time.
uKheshe cards are sold for R20 at the platform’s retail partner, Pick n Pay, where users can also draw cash by presenting a reference number, which can be requested via the uKheshe app.
Having recently partnered with Mastercard, uKheshe can also accept payments from most mobile money payment and banking apps.
Hayward spoke to finweek about the new fintech.
What gap in the banking market is uKheshe’s digital payments solution closing?
When we built uKheshe, we really wanted to make a difference in people’s lives at the bottom-end of the pyramid. A lot of banks, payment and insurance companies talk about making a difference to the people at the bottom-end, but they come up with propositions that do not really speak to the challenge.
The question was, how can we make it easy for that person to give money to somebody who does not have a bank account but will benefit from receiving a digital payment?
How has the concept been received by the unbanked population you are targeting?
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