Car guards going cashless

Digital payment solution Street Wallet is helping car guards across South Africa to increase and sometimes even double their daily income in an increasingly cashless society, the Sunday Times reports.

Street Wallet offers customers multiple ways of paying, including Scan to Pay using a quick response (QR) code, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, SnapScan, and Zapper.

Andre Ilunga, a car guard in the Camps Bay area in Cape Town, told the Times that everything has changed for him since he started using the app.

Because most people did not tip him due to a lack of cash, he now makes nearly double what he would typically have made in a day.

Thanks to the app, Ilunga said he sometimes receives tips equivalent to a whole day’s income — up to R600.

The decrease in cash usage across South Africa has made it increasingly difficult for car guards to generate a stable income, as they lack access to digital payment solutions.

Sipho Dlamini, a car guard working in Greenside, Johannesburg, pointed out that he used to receive tips from roughly 50% of cars, whereas now the number has dropped to 20%.

However, payment solutions like Street Wallet allow car guards like Andre to adapt to South Africa’s increasingly cashless society.

Street Wallet CEO Kosta Scholiadis told the Times that they have seen a 100% increase in tips for car guards using the app, with the average user paying R30 instead of R5 or R10.

The app is also very convenient for car guards to use as it does not charge any fixed or upfront costs and does not require a bank account.

Funds can be withdrawn from banks using digital vouchers.

This helps sidestep one of the hurdles that must be overcome for more South Africans to go cashless.

According to the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), the lack of affordable mobile Internet access is a major limiting factor in creating a cashless society.

This was reported in the SARB’s Digital Payments Roadmap, which sets out a plan to create a more sustainable and accessible digital payments society in South Africa.

The report cites research by FinScope showing that only 66% of the country has access to the Internet at home.

If only two-thirds of the country can access the Internet, this is a major limiting factor to fully implementing digital payments in the future.

Further evidence of this is cited from the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), which shows that only 17% of South Africans living in big metros had access to the Internet at home in 2023.

The amount drops to 1% for those living in rural areas.

Stats SA’s general household survey for 2023 showed that 78.6% of South Africans have access to the Internet anywhere in the country.

Mobile access is a significant contributor to this number, with 72.6% of the country having access compared to only 14.5% having a fixed Internet connection at home.

Icasa points to cost, lack of skills, and lack of relevant content as reasons why South Africans covered by a 2G,3G, or 4G signal still don’t have access.

The Reserve Bank highlights the high costs relative to other parts of the world as disincentivising the frequent use of digital payments, which is more pronounced in lower-income communities.

At R85 per gigabyte, mobile data prices in 2022 were three times as high as in North Africa and double the price in Western Europe, according to the report.

“In some instances, free banking apps are not necessarily free as updates to the latest security features or functionalities require regular updates, and data/Wi-Fi availability is not always affordable,” the Reserve Bank says.

Stats SA’s household survey shows that the national average household access was 14.5% for 2023, increasing from 13% in 2022.

This number has seen very little change over the past 14 years, with year-to-year declines in seven of the 13 years.

Home access was 10.6% in 2010, eventually climbing to 11.1% in 2011. A period of stagnation followed, and it dropped to 8.3% in 2020. Since then, it has consistently improved.

These figures include all means of accessing the Internet.