Visa Everywhere Initiative, a global open innovation competition that sees startups pitch their innovative solutions to solve tomorrow’s payment and commerce challenges announced their South African winner.
The event will took place in Cape Town, on the 22nd of June where VEI in South Africa saw an in-person competition, where 5 fintech finalists pitched their startup and solutions to judges
This year, there are 3 special editions in CEMEA which are South Africa, Kenya, and Saudi. Winners in each market will progress to regional finals. The intention of the competition is to highlight unique startups that are driving change, solving problems, accessing new segments. More importantly, the competition creates visibility for the fintechs both local and global, that attracts investment and new opportunities to partner.
This year five startups participated in the competition, Thomas Brennan of Franc.app that helps you invest like a pro in a simple and easy way and aims to create equity exposure, Briam Mokwaiba of Vuleka, a Platform that is structured to support an entire trading ecosystem within the informal sector and connects small manufacturers and large wholesalers to spaza shop owners via their platform. Camille O’Sullivan a founder of Tweak a carbon market that aims to provide a rewarding sustainable behaviours that are otherwise overlooked. Lance Fanaroff of iidentitii, an Identity verification and advanced biometrics constitute the core tenets of financial compliance and anti-money laundering (AML). And lastly Alex Forsyth-Thompson for Float a payment system that enables you to convert your credit card purchases into instalments. and does not charge interest or fees.
This year’s South Africa winner is Brian Mokwaiba of Vuleka who took home 50 000 US dollars and will be progressing to regional finals.
In his presentation Mokwaiba explained that Vuleka helps informal business that does not use systems in order to get their businesses viable therefore Vuleka offers small informal businesses credits and provides distribution and provide cashless payments to small informal businesses and help them be sustainable.
The Vuleka uses technology such as social communication platform, WhatsApp, Mobile App, a network of agents to help and communicate with informal businesses.
The App has helped over 5000 small informal businesses.
