Tag: cashless payment

As South Africa moves into 2025, key sectors, including energy, finance, technology, and manufacturing are experiencing significant shifts. These sectors will continue to evolve in response to economic, social, and global trends. International events, innovation and the drive for sustainability will drive developments across industries.

In the heart of South Africa's vibrant township economy, valued at an estimated R750 billion, a transformative shift is taking place. Small to medium-sized businesses are flourishing as the adoption of cashless transactions grows. Despite the widespread availability of banking services, with eight out of ten South African adults having a bank account, cash remains the dominant form of payment.

With an estimated 150,000 micro merchants in townships, peri urban areas and rural areas, digitalising small and informal merchants could create significant economic spinoffs for underserved and excluded communities across the nation. Generating R178 billion in annual sales, merchants serve around 80% of the population. These merchants are often excluded from the financial and technology tools that larger retailers take for granted, restricting them from reaching their full potential.

The “cashless revolution” spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic has proven durable and persistent. PwC’s Payments 2025 & beyond publication, released in 2021, reported a 42% increase in global cashless payment volumes. The 2023 McKinsey Global Payments Report found that global cash usage continued to decline – by four percentage points year on year – and that the growth rate of electronic transactions was nearly triple that of the overall growth in payments revenue.

With recent research showing that only 14% of South African consumers are ready to go completely cashless, retailers should be looking at ways to accommodate their customers’ preferred way to pay, while also reducing their operating costs.

On-demand online grocery shopping – like many other e-commerce categories – has become intertwined in everyday life. From fashion apparel and entertainment to more unconventional categories such as social enterprise, consumers are shifting from bricks to clicks, lending to growth in local e-commerce market.

Super apps, banking-as-a-service, behavioural banking and cyber security. These are just a few of the trends that promise to make the future of banking fast, frictionless, and personalised. The increasing prevalence of smartphones means that billions now have an entire banking system in their pockets.

People’s safety concerns about transmission through contact has resulted in COVID-19 becoming a catalyst for the adoption of cashless payments globally and even more so in South Africa, with the disruption expected to effect lasting changes in the way people transact with cards and cash.