What are the facts?

Inqaku have taken the local football scene by storm on two fronts: 1) By using software to bring efficiency to amateur football. 2) Providing tailor-made insurance for players, fans, coaches and other football stakeholders.

By working together with all football stakeholders – from FIFA down to the smallest grassroots clubs – MYSAFA, which is designed and developed and currently operated by Inqaku, has created a digital ecosystem focused on transparency, efficiency, service delivery and uniting the football community.

On this platform, every club and player registered on MYSAFA is issued with a FIFA Connect ID, which is used to record transfers, identify talent and help ensure that developing clubs receive FIFA Training Rewards for the players they develop.

To date, over 500 000 player registrations have been captured on MYSAFA and that number continues to grow as more and more clubs realise the importance of what the platform provides.

“All regional football, men’s and women’s regional leagues and provincial and national leagues are on the platform and 75% of the men’s Local Football Associations, like senior promotion leagues, are there as well. So, it’s had a big impact at club level because in South Africa, clubs have a lot more confidence that they can train and develop a player, and that player is not going to just walk away and sign for another club without the knowledge of the club that’s invested in them,” said Anderson.

“Something like this really only exists in South Africa. There’s only one platform in Africa that has registered hundreds of thousands of players a year, has a comprehensive competition management system, etc., and assigns FIFA IDs to all those players and that’s our system, MYSAFA, in South Africa. So, operationally and from a regulatory perspective, bringing transparency to football has been a big part of what we’ve done beyond that. There’s so much more that we can do and we are trying to do around making clubs more commercially sustainable, driving more revenue into the sport at the amateur level, giving clubs more opportunities to grow and generate annuity revenue so that they are more stable,” he further explains.

Another way in which Inqaku are giving back to amateur football is when the company started introducing insurance for players, coaches, administrators and fans who want cover at affordable prices while supporting the development of football back in 2021. Whenever an Inqaku Funeral Insurance policy is purchased using a football club’s unique link, Inqaku rewards the club with an amount equal to 10% of the premium every month. Inqaku also pays SAFA a share of the profit made on the distribution of Inqaku Funeral Insurance whenever it is purchased using a referring club link.

This is done through an online shop where clubs and SAFA structures can spend rewards generated from promoting Inqaku Funeral Insurance. This encourages collective bargaining for better quality boots, kit and equipment at discounted prices.

“We see in South Africa that there are probably 10 000 clubs that are active on an annual basis, but the churn there from year to year of clubs that come and go because they play a couple of seasons in a Local Football Association promotion league or regional league, where you’ve got fairly significant transport and other costs, you know. They oftentimes will start the season and they won’t be able to complete it because they’ve run out of money and they don’t have any money for transport, especially.

“So, to be able to drive some revenue back into the sport via insurance sales, we have these funeral policies that we sell that 10% of the premium is paid back to the clubs who referred the policyholder. So, anybody can take a policy and they can specify a particular soccer club as the referring club and then 10% of premium gets deposited into that club’s wallet on the MYSAFA platform each month. So, initiatives like that and our player self-registration feature that we’ve launched and others that are coming are all initiatives to make these clubs more sustainable and more successful,” Anderson says.