Driven by the desire to provide digital solutions to South Africa's payment system, Thando Hlongwane and Roger Bukuru established Lipa payment in 2019. Lipa payment's latest feature will allow merchants to accept payment from phones using Bluetooth or bank card payment directly on their smartphones. The Tap-to-pay part will open a new level of digital inclusion in South Africa and the entire continent finance industry, as only Apple's iPhone is known to have plans to initiate the same capability.
Contactless payment is already a preferred choice in countries like the US, UK, France, Spain, Australia, and Eastern Europe, as transactions through this means take less than 30 seconds to complete. It provides sufficient speed for maximum customer satisfaction in paying for goods or services. Plus, The Tap-to-pay feature also enhances security, especially in a continent known for its vices like Africa. Users will not need to carry cards or cash around, reducing theft rates and making it easy for a business to be carried out effortlessly at any location.
Lipa's ability to actualize its plan will remove Africa's tag as underdogs. Achieving the Tap-to-pay would be a bold statement that the continent can champion ideas in the ecosystem of Financial Technology. With only 15 million employed of its 40 million population, Lip would enhance small-scale businesses across South Africa. The unemployed could venture into entrepreneurship with a reduced cost of transactions and the availability of mediums for merchants to receive payment as all that is needed is a smartphone.
South Africa in focus:
Population: 59.31 million in 2020 as compared to 58.56 million in 2019
GDP: $301.9 billion compared to $351.4 billion in 2019
GDP per capita: $5,090 in 2020 compared to $6,001 in 2019
