Author: Staff Writer

ASX-listed Zip has announced its intention to fully acquire South African buy now pay later (BNPL) FinTech Payflex as part of its global expansion plans. With a presence in twelve markets across five continents, Zip plans to grow the South African business and expand into other African markets with sizable underbanked, digitally savvy populations that will benefit from innovative payment solutions. Payflex is the first and largest BNPL player in South Africa and has grown from a base of just 70 merchants in 2019 to over 1,000 active merchants today, including leading brands such as Superbalist, Cotton On and Runwaysale.…

The new Huawei Nova Y60 and Nova 8 are part of the new Nova series and this September Telkom is championing Monate and connecting you to these new devices as of 1 September 2021. Telkom’s online channel and physical stores across the country will be showering customers with exemplary service and compelling products with a fresh burst of innovation, as well as devices with features that appeal to all types of users. These two beautiful-looking devices from the nova series will impress you with their top-of-the-line camera specs and larger-than-life batteries. Qualifying customers for the deal include new and existing…

Mercedes-Benz SA has announced that Co-CEO & Executive Director Johannes Fritz, who steered South Africa’s top-selling premium car brand since September 2017, will be moving back to Germany to head up Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans in Bavaria – one of the largest sales regions in the German market. Fritz, who spent four years in South Africa, believed firmly that the brand’s biggest differentiators in a highly competitive market would be an innovative retail experience, an unwavering focus on customer care and a strong partnership with its agent partners. As such, one of the key achievements of his tenure was the…

Isaac Nape, an emerging South African talent in the study of quantum optics, is part of a crack team of Wits physicists who led an international study that revealed the hidden structures of quantum entangled states. The study was published in the renowned scientific journal, Nature Communications, on Friday, 27 August 2021. Nape is pursuing his PhD at Wits University and focuses on harnessing structured patterns of light for high dimensional information encoding and decoding for use in quantum communication. Earlier this year he scooped up two awards at the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP) conference to add to…

Huawei South Africa supplier, Doreen Mbhalati-Mashele of Deliz Investments has been given a Special Recognition Award at the 2021 BRICS Women Innovation Contest, for her efforts in environmental sustainability, and green design. Mbhalati-Mashele says she was ecstatic to receive this news, especially during August, which is Women’s Month in the country. “I was speechless when I found out that I’d won,” she says. “I didn’t think that I’d be recognised at the BRICS level at this stage of my career. The award has motivated me to go the extra mile when it comes to project delivery, environmental sustainability and job…

PayU, the payments and FinTech business of Prosus, is spending $4.7 billion or R69 billion to buy Indian digital payments provider BillDesk. The proposed acquisition will see PayU, which operates in more than 20 high-growth markets, become one of the leading online payment providers globally by total payment volume (TPV). Acquisition of BillDesk will see PayU become one of the leading online payment providers globally, handling a total payment volume (TPV) of $147 billion or R2.1 trillion. The deal will bring Prosus’s cumulative investment in Indian tech to more than $10 billion or R145 billion. “Our announcement today reflects Prosus’s…

China on Monday announced strict new rules that will ban children from playing online games during weekdays and limit them to just three hours per week. Variety reported that the rules were unveiled by the National Press and Publication Administration in order to curb gaming addiction among teenagers, state news agency Xinhua reported. Gamers aged below 18 will be limited to one hour of online game play, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in normal weeks. They will also be allowed to play on statutory public holidays, said the publication. Current rules allow for 90…

South Africa’s operators to give back temporary radio frequency spectrum assignments. ICASA, the country’s communications watchdog, said today that it has resolved that the temporary radio frequency spectrum assigned to licensees will now have to be returned by no later 30 November 2021. The temporary radio frequency spectrum was first assigned by means of an expedited ITA during April 2020 on the initial declaration of the National State of Disaster, which in turn was occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. ICASA has since twice extended the duration of the temporary radio frequency spectrum assignment, with the last expiry date being 31…

Conducting background checks on service providers and employees has always been restricted to large organisations such as corporations and government departments. Now, anyone in South Africa can do so, thanks to an innovative new online platform called iKNOWyou. Targeted at property owners, parents, and small businesses, this newly launched online personal vetting solution by Managed Integrity Evaluation (MIE), provides users with better insight into who they are employing or contracting. The platform first runs identity verification to assess whether individuals are indeed who they say they are and provides further information by means of a criminal check. “With criminal activity…

This week South Africa’s unemployment rate soared to 44.4% over the second quarter, the highest on a global list of 82 countries monitored by Bloomberg. Now, a new video-interview platform Wamly aims to play its part in tackling the country’s growing unemployment rate. The disruptive one-way video software platform has recently been joined by South African serial entrepreneur Marnus Broodryk. He believes that the time is right for investment in innovative thinking that takes advantage of modern technology to replace outdated processes and costly, time-wasting procedures. “We need to be thinking differently and to use innovation to solve the country’s issues…