Crazy for cellbanking
Well, it turns out being “half bloody mad” hasn’t worked out so badly for Richardson.
Conceived after a discussion with Cyril Ramaphosa (a firm friend) in 2002, Wizzit Bank has grown to more than 150 000 clients within two years of launch.
Richardson and his business partner, Charles Rowlinson, had a plan to launch a bank account that could be opened and run over a cellphone. After all, only 13m of SA’s 44m people have a bank account, but you can bet a large whack of those have cellphones. Now it seems obvious, and there are many “cellphone banks”, such as MTN Bank (partnering Standard Bank). But in 2002 Richardson couldn’t give his plan away. “The big four banks turned us down. I think they thought we were crazy.” He convinced the Bank of Athens and Wizzit Bank opened its virtual doors in 2005, using the Bank of Athens’ banking licence. “[We] put all our money into this venture [so] we have a strong vested interest.”
But Richardson wasn’t just some bright spark off the street. He initially worked at Barclays (before Barclays quit SA), under then CEO Chris Ball. Richardson then met Rowlinson and the two built the Renwick Group.
Now it seems a fad to “bank the unbanked”, so what makes Richardson so confident?
“The cost of many of the existing products prohibits them from servicing the poor. Second, many of these bank products’ just don’t do what people want – it’s like saying, here’s a car but you can only drive to Heidelberg,” he says. So the Wizzit account can be opened on a cellphone and money can be deposited at post offices or Absa branches. Transactions cost between 99c and R4,99. And if you haven’t seen Wizzit, it’s because it doesn’t spend a cent on advertising. A network of 3 000 “Wizzkids” punt the product in their communities and get paid a commission. The bank is on track to turn a profit by next year. Richardson has big plans to take Wizzit to Eastern Europe, Africa, South America and Southeast Asia.
“You’ve got to have a passion for this market, and you just feel that for many of the other banks, their heart isn’t truly in servicing the [poorest],” he says.
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