T2S2

One of the most important new technologies in our renewable energy future is one you've probably never heard of. Called wheeling, it is the way that electricity is accounted for when you move it across the grid and you’re probably already using it, Open Access Energy founder Gerjo Hoffman tells Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. Read more on Stuff.

Most of South Africa's youth don’t watch a TV set. Why should they? They have a mobile entertainment console in their hands that can access the new form of television: streaming. Jason Probert, general manager for digital services for MTN South Africa, tells Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak how he is making it easier and more cost-effective. Read more on Stuff.

For many millions, a mobile phone is their only computer and their only screen. Jason Lobel, MTN South Africa’s head of video, wants to get streaming services to those people, he tells Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. Read more on Stuff.

PayShap is the biggest thing to happen in banking in South Africa, if it is done right, says TymeBank’s co-founder and group CEO Coen Jonker. The new rapid payment method is a “game changer” and the “key that will unlock the true digitisation of the cash economy,” he tells Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. Read more on Stuff.

Instead of buying expensive textbooks, which learners are stuck with, what if you could “rent” them? Calling it a "Spotify for textbooks," this is the idea behind MTN’s new educational offering, MTN South Africa’s general manager of digital services Jason Probert tells says Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. Joining them is Thabiet Allie, the head of new business development and who is driving the operator’s online learning. Read more on Stuff.

Gaming is still a fundamental way us humans interact and hasn't always been on a high-tech console, MTN’s gaming geeks tell Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. Veteran executive Jason Probert is general manager of digital services for MTN South Africa, while Bradly Kirby is senior specialist of eSports and gaming– and gamers themselves. Apart from this philosophical reminder, gaming is how we have fun, blow off steam and socialise. Some of us do it on a padel court, others over a PlayStation. Read more on Stuff.

“Going solar” is the catch phrase of the year. Again. But how do you tell the shysters from the bone fide solar installers? And how do you get finance for an off-grid system? Also, without having to become an expert yourself, what exactly do you need? This is the what Hohm Energy does, providing a marketplace for finding providers and financiers, its head of business intelligence Matthew Cruise tells editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak in the third episode of Stuff’s going off-grid podcast series. Read more on Stuff.

South Africans are good at solving problems. With extreme load-shredding, we’ve started finding alternatives in true “n boer maak ‘n plan” style. From LED lightbulbs with built-in batteries to backup batteries for Wi-Fi routers, and a new category of small, but powerful, power stations, there are a range of new Eskom-induced technology. Several innovative South African companies have their own ways of tackling the blackouts. In the second of Stuff’s going off-grid podcast series, editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak meets local firm Syntech. He speaks to co-founder Ryan Martyn​ and CEO Craig Nowitz. Read more on Stuff.

With rolling blackouts hitting stage 6, insurance companies have stopped insuring against some Eskom-related claims. But, if your home solar system was installed by someone without the right certification and not registered with the correct authorities, that system isn’t insured. Nor is your house as a result, warns Chris Liebenberg, Elite Energy’s technical director. Going solar needs planning and research, he tells Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak in the first podcast in a new series about getting off-grid. Read more on Stuff.

Smartphones have taken over many other functions from other devices, including, most recently, most people’s wallets. Is the end of the credit card nigh, Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak asks Nedbank CIO Fred Swanepoel. After years of rapid progress, fuelled by the Covid lockdown, how we pay has changed, as has the ways banks themselves are operating. As ever, cybersecurity remains one of the biggest trends this year. Read more on Stuff.

Not only has Shoprite won the first round of the app delivery wars, its quietly been offering banking to its customers. How did a grocer evolve into such a commanding position, to the point where it has a general manger of financial services, Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak asks Jean Olivier in this latest episode of T2S2’s fintech podcast series. Listen here to Shoprite X CEO Neil Schreuder telling Shapshak how Checkers Sixty60 changed the grocery delivery game. Read more on Stuff

The newest frontier in the fight against cyber criminals is identity, Nedbank’s Vickus Meyer tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. As South Africa has gotten more fibre and faster speeds, criminals are finding new ways to hack into companies and personal accounts, requiring new ways of keeping yourself safe, including multifactor authentication, adds Alan Dewaal Smit, a security expert from ITR Technology. Read more on Stuff.

Covid-19 accelerated the way people use digital platforms to do the things we used to do in real life. As people upgraded their tech skills, it was also a boon for many companies. Mutsa Chironga, Nedbank’s consumer segment managing executive who is responsible for over 7-million individual clients in South Africa, discusses the way people’s financial habits have changed. Google South Africa’s head of financial services Paul Mayanja tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak how businesses are shifting to digital. Read more on Stuff.

Changing consumer behaviour and a lack of storage means people are turning to so-called super apps like Nedbank’s Avo and Moya.app. There apps provide more than one service – including messaging, news and a marketplace – and are increasingly popular. Lentell discusses how Moya.app has grown to 10m customers, while Maharaj tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about is the first super app launched by a bank, Avo. Read more on Stuff.

Now that our smartphones have become the centre of our lives, the way we pay for things has completely changed. I was in New York in May and London in August and used my phone to pay for everything – as I have done for the last year at home. Nedbank’s executive for emerging innovations Chipo Mushwana and Payments Association of SA CEO Ghita Erling tell Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about current trends and developments. Read more on Stuff.

For a time, FedGroup's investment app was the top downloaded app in South Africa. When it launched it was a revolutionary way of investing in bee hives and raspberries. It also epitomised how FedGroup itself operates, and now its amicable CEO Grant Field is following his passion and trying to fish plastic out of South Africa’s rivers. He spoke to Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. Read more on Stuff.

How did a bullied introverted Pretoria schoolboy become the world’s richest person and arguably humanity’s greatest change agent? Michael Vlismas, who went to the same school, has produced an extensively researched biography that does a great job of unwrapping Elon Musk’s remarkable life story. He tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about writing the first South African biography about Musk. Read more on Stuff.

After convincing South Africans to be healthier through its Vitality programme, Discovery took this shared-value incentivisation idea to car insurance. The better you drive, the less insurance you pay – and fewer accidents happen. This highly-successful Vitality Drive telematics has already been exported to the UK, and is now being launched in Saudi Arabia. Discovery Insure deputy CEO Francois Theron and head of telematics Ilan Ossin tell Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about how South African innovation is going global. Read more on Stuff.

Having successfully launched in South Africa, and with an imminent launch in the Philippines, TymeBank is looking for further international expansion. Current SA CEO Tauriq Keeran tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about his transition into group executive for growth projects. Read more on Stuff.

Co-founder and CEO Katlego Maphai launched Yoco with three friends in October 2015. From a year-long beta with 500 merchants, they are now adding 10,000 new merchants a month. He tells Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about the phenomenal rise of this remarkable mobile payments business, that has now evolved into a payments platform. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Max Cuvellier’s not-insubstantial day job is head of mobile for development for the GSMA. But that’s not what he’s talking to Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about. His also not-insubstantial side-jig is a data newsletter called Africa: The Big Deal, which he runs with his good friend Maxime Bayen. This “one graph, one paragraph” weekly newsletter has tracked how fintech has exploded on the continent; while start-ups in Africa have raised $1.8bn in Q1 of 2022, 2.5x the amount raised a year before. Read more on Stuff Studios.

In 2015 Disrupt Africa began publishing its annual African Tech Startups Funding Report. Since then says Disrupt co-founder Tom Jackson, African tech startups have seen investments increase by 351% and culminating in a record $2bn in 2021. Half of that “incredible growth” was invested in fintechs, Jackson tells Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. A total of 564 startups raised a $2,148,517,500 in 2021 – more than treble (or 206%) over 2020. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Netstock.co is the biggest new thing you’ve never heard of. This innovative South African company, which was bought in 2020 to a US private equity firm, provides data science analytics to small businesses to manage their inventory. Amazingly, Netstocks’ acquisition came just as the global supply chain was hit by Covid-19 lockdowns, making this service even more essential. It took over a decade to become an “overnight success” as Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak jokes with its remarkable chief technology officer and co-founder Barry Kukkuk. Read more on Stuff Studios.

“If I played you a track of music, could you tell if it was composed by a human or an artificial intelligence,” Tencent Africa CEO Brett Loubser asked an auditorium of people at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival’s digital conference, Creativate. Amazingly, nobody could. How AI and machine learning are being adapted for the most personal of skills – creativity – offer not only a fascinating look at how it is being achieved; but an equally intriguing insight into how AI could work in fintech. He spoke to Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak. Read more on Stuff Studios.

In March 2007 in the most unlikely of places, a new era began for how us humans performed one of our most important activities: making payments. Until M-Pesa emerged in Kenya, financial transactions using the then rudimental 2G cellphones was extremely hard. Now, the grandfather of mobile money is part of a suite of offerings from its parent, Vodacom, which has a next-generation superapp of its own, VodaPay. He spoke to Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about the future of fintech in Africa. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Moya is often mistakenly compared to WhatsApp, the mega messaging app, when the more apt comparison is super app WeChat. Although its CEO Gour Lentell points out his datafree app’s biggest drawcard is free messaging – which is the thing they miss most when they run out of data, his research found. But Moya, which has 6.5m monthly active users, is also pivoting to fintech, launching its own mobile wallet, MoyaPayD. He tells Stuff Studio’s editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about why datafree is the icing on the cake, but you still have to have good cake to make the whole offering work. Read more on Stuff Studios.

When two geeks tried to solve their own frustrations around rolling blackouts, they created a now-indispensable app called Eskom se Push. It now tells 2.5m South Africans every day what outages to expect from the power utility. Although the way Herman Maritz and Dan Wells have brought a county together, while demonstrating a key tenet of why innovation in Africa is better: innovation out of necessity. They tell Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about this remarkable app’s unusual journey to greatness. Meanwhile, a grateful nation thanks them. Read more on Stuff Studios.

As investments lead for Flourish in Africa, Ameya Upadhyay has been helping build African unicorns for a decade. His acumen is as impressive as his success rate, including notable startups like Flutterwave and Lidya (listen here). He tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about “baking” an African unicorn – which he has done multiple times. His insights into investing in Africa, especially in fintech, are a master class. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Arguably the most important step in digital and financial inclusion is getting people online in the first place. The largest provider of free public wifi in sub-Saharan Africa is BRCK, a truly remarkable Kenyan start-up that has grown from its revolutionary first BRCK v1 to a SupaBRCK to connect rural villages in Rwanda to its brilliant Moja free public wifi. Co-founder Erik Hersman, who also co-launched renowned tech firm Ushahidi and the iHub in Nairobi, tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about why the internet should always be free. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Sim Tshabalala is a modern-day Medici. Appearing like a conventional banker in his immaculate suit and tie, he's a deep-thinking man who understands the power of commerce to uplift the country, the role of arts in society and democracy. He’s also the CEO of Standard Bank, the largest financial institution in Africa, who isn’t afraid to compliment (and name-check) smaller competitors. He spoke to Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about the 159-year-old bank’s evolution in this new cloud computing era, and how small fintechs are helping revolutionise financial inclusion in Africa. Read more on Stuff Studios.

With a valuation reportedly of $3bn, Nigeria's Flutterwave is one of the most successful – and inspiring – startups in Africa. Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak spoke with its CEO and cofounder Olugbenga Agboola during a recent trip to Lagos, where he also interviewed Lidya co-founder Ercin Eksin. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Fintech app Shyft won a prestigious innovation award from global banking organisation Efma in Barcelona in 2016 before it even launched. The innovative forex app – which was the first to offer virtual credit cards in South Africa, about five years before they became mainstream – has grown significantly, adding investment. Having won a stream of awards – including a Stuff App Award – its head Arno von Helden tells Stuff Studio's editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak how it is planning to Shyft digital banking. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Naked's clever app took the insurance industry by storm when it launched, offering a fully digital way for consumers to insure their cars and homes. Most innovatively is Naked's option to turn off driving insurance when your car is parked at home. A sign of its success is how Naspers Foundry has invested R120m ($8.3m) investment in the AI-driven insurtech firm. Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak speaks to Fabian Whate, head of Naspers Foundry, and Naked co-founder Ernest North about its legacy-free services. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Visa South Africa country manager Aldo Laubscher tells Stuff Studios editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak that despite Covid and its effects, the last two years have accelerated digitisation and digital ways of paying. Visa found that 51% of over-50s in the country used ecommerce for the first time. Visa, which has 3,3bn card credentials and processes 65,000 to 70,0000 transactions per second, is looking at “credentials” instead of cards. Or, as Laubscher calls it, it is “plastic with a digital feel”. Read more on Stuff Studios.

Andre de Ruyter is the most important businessman in South Africa today. If the Eskom CEO can’t deal with its debt, its notorious inefficiency, and the load-shedding problems, the whole country will suffer. Or suffer more. An explosion in Medupi the week of the interview, also can't help. Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak is more interested in how De Ruyter plans to turn Eskom into a modern power utility. And yes, solar is in the mix. Read more on Stuff.

Checker's Sixty60 delivery app was the hands-down winner grocery delivery was of Covid. Even before lockdown, I was a regular, and very happy, user of the app which promised your delivery within 60 minutes. It has been downloaded more than 1.5m times and, rather than take away jobs, its has created has created 2,870 new ones. It's a project run by Shoprite's chief of strategy and innovation Neil Schreuder tells Stuff Studio's editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about its latest innovation: a cashier-less "rush" store which automatically tracks (using cameras) what its staff select in the pilot store. Read more on Stuff.

Deep insight into the plumbing of banking and no legacy business model enable the latest challenger bank to offer zero fees and other canny innovations. Bank Zero co-founder and chairman Michael Jordaan is a strange combination of brilliant geek and humble venture capitalist, which is perhaps why his magic potion of a bank is already so intoxicating to South Africans weary of high bank fees. He speaks to Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak about how the bank was conceived and how it plans to shake up banking. More