Bevan Ducasse was sick of lugging around a wallet full of plastic and paper and realised there had to be a better and more convenient solution. So he dreamt up the idea of using cellphones to make payments at the retail point of sale.
Bevan Ducasse
"I noted that there were different cards for everything in the payment environment. So I figured out a way of linking all these cards to one platform and saw huge potential in linking payments to cellphones."
The result is wiWallet, which was launched commercially in August. Consumers are charged R4/month to link their credit cards with their cellphones. If no transactions take place in any given month, the subscription fee is waived. There is an additional R2,50/month per credit card loaded. Banks will still receive the bank fee from the merchant, which is typically between 2% and 6% of the transaction value.
Consumers install an application in their phones, which they then use to pay for products at retailers' points of sale. Loyalty programmes are included for participating stores, so points are automatically loaded onto the phone and can also be redeemed from the device.
Ducasse developed a business plan and took it to UCS Group. He wanted to partner UCS because of its large network of point-of-sale devices around the country.
UCS Group CEO John Bright says that given the IT group's wide point of sale network, wiWallet could quickly become a pervasive technology.
Ducasse commissioned his friend Basie Kok, who he describes as a technical genius, to develop a prototype of the technology. Kok also developed the mobile application software that sits on consumers' cellphones - no easy task given the vast array of phone models on the market.
The biggest focus was on security. With credit card fraud on the rise, no credit card information is passed on to anybody. Ducasse says wiWallet is "determined to reduce fraud".
For now, consumers have to tie the wiWallet application to a credit card, or in-store or loyalty cards, but Ducasse says the banks are already showing interest in utilising the service in conjunction with debit cards and other types of cards. "We are focused on linking people who have bank accounts to make payments from the cellphone rather than trying to bank them ourselves."
In addition to buying groceries and other in-store items, the system allows consumers to do bill payments from wherever they happen to be.
Ducasse says SA companies are doing pioneering work in mobile payments. He points to Fundamo, a payments company which provided the back-end for MTN Banking, the joint venture between MTN and Standard Bank, as an example.
wiWallet has launched with a number of small retailers and restaurants in Cape Town, with bigger, national retailers expected to follow in the next few months.
He says that once wiWallet has been established in SA, he hopes to take it global. Ultimately, Ducasse says the cellphone offers the best chance yet for the world to move from cash to electronic payments. "From a security and convenience point of view, and to address the unbanked market, it's the way to go."
More people, he says, have cellphones than bank accounts and even TVs. The biggest hurdle is consumer awareness and getting the consumer to understand why it is a more secure option.
