Mobile apps mean cash no longer king

THE increase in mobile apps that allow people to pay for services and merchandise without needing hard cash or bank cards means that more people are able to run their lives with just their cellphones.

Kobus Ehlers, co-founder of SnapScan, said the app was used for transactions totalling millions every day. SnapScan, which won MTN Business’s 2013 app of the year award, has registered more than 14 000 businesses nationwide.

A rival app, newcomer FlickPay, has more than 100 businesses registered on its platform. In less than five months since launching, FlickPay has tied up a deal to make its mobile pay platform available to Vida e Caffè outlets nationwide. Trent McLelland, MD of FlickPay, said the company was rolling out to News Cafe, Primi World, Melissa’s and Madame Zingara, with more to come.

McLelland said he was holding discussions with a major retailer, which could lead to consumers being able to use their phones to pay for groceries.

Mobile pay apps are the answer for small businesses that feel that owning a credit card machine is too expensive. Apps come at no cost to the consumer other than the small amount of data needed to process a transaction — a few kilobytes at most or as little as a single WhatsApp message.

The popularity of these apps is fuelled by the increasing costs of carrying hard cash for banks and consumers. These costs are partly behind the push by banks to persuade clients to use electronic banking platforms.

Absa’s Payment Pebble, launched in 2012, and Nedbank’s PocketPOS, are

Mobile pay apps are the answer for small businesses

similar to the US-based Square, which uses a phone to process payments. FNB is launching an equivalent mobile point-of-sale product.

FlickPay has private funding and private partners, but McLelland said a strategic partner such as a bank, credit card company or mobile network would make sense. “We are starting to have these conversations.”

SnapScan has a partnership with Standard Bank. Ehlers said: “We combine the flexibility of a small start-up team with the consumer trust, expertise and experience of a bank.”