Wakandi Group and YellowDot Africa partnered to boost financial innovation in South Africa
Wakandi Group has joined forces with YellowDot Africa to deliver its innovative financial inclusion system for informal financial groups (IFGs), popularly known as stokvels in South Africa. In collaboration with YellowDot Africa, Wakandi aims to offer its Credit Association Management System (CAMS) that can be used by Stokvels to offer better services to their members. It can enable both companies to penetrate deeper into the vast market and reach to more potential communities with digital solutions.
Stokvels are South Africa’s version of credit associations typically made up of 5-20 people who agree to contribute a certain amount for various purposes like savings and investments. According to a report by the University of Cape Town, there are over 820,000 stokvels in the country with a combined membership of 11.4 million people. These stokvels generate around R44 billion ($2.34 billion) every year, bringing massive opportunities for the market players.
Abiding by the mission to enhance financial inclusion, Wakandi together with YellowDot conducted a feasibility study on 1097 participants in South Africa to understand the needs of the future users of the CAMS. The goal of the study was to:
- Identify how stokvels currently operate
- Get feedback from the real users
The study enabled us to find what challenges Stokvels face in day-to-day operations. It also helped us to gain feedback from real users and ensure that the CAMS product offers the right solution to those problems.
CAMS is built on Wakandi’s DLT-based financial infrastructure to provide affordable transactions with better security and transparency. It can be an effective solution for currently operating Stokvels which are dependent on cash and manual processes for everyday transactions. The system can enable secure and real-time value transfers, reducing chances of fraud and corruption. Using the infrastructure, businesses can also build innovative financial solutions for the communities they serve.
About YellowDot Africa
YellowDot Africa is a technology company established in 2013 with a mission to transform lives through unique mobile products and outstanding services across Africa. YellowDot Africa offers digital content, robust technical platforms for videos, gaming, SMS, USSD, IVR, OBD and smart messaging.
About Wakandi Group
Wakandi Group AS is a Norwegian company founded with an aim to improve how the money and money transfers are handled by African societies. Wakandi offers a DLT-based financial infrastructure to help businesses offer payment solutions with better security and more transparency. The infrastructure also enables a huge data hub that can be used to build better products and services.