{"id":561682,"date":"2024-09-22T09:19:16","date_gmt":"2024-09-22T07:19:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=561682"},"modified":"2024-09-22T09:19:23","modified_gmt":"2024-09-22T07:19:23","slug":"car-guards-going-cashless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/banking\/561682-car-guards-going-cashless.html","title":{"rendered":"Car guards going cashless"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the app, Ilunga said he sometimes receives tips equivalent to a whole day’s income \u2014<\/strong> up to R600.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, payment solutions like Street Wallet allow car guards like Andre to adapt to South Africa’s increasingly cashless society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Funds can be withdrawn from banks using digital vouchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This helps sidestep one of the hurdles that must be overcome for more South Africans to go cashless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

\"\"
Percentage distribution of households with access to the Internet at home or through all means. Source: Stats SA General Household Survey 2023<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report cites research by FinScope showing that only 66% of the country has access to the Internet at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amount drops to 1% for those living in rural areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

This number has seen very little change over the past 14 years, with year-to-year declines in seven of the 13 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These figures include all means of accessing the Internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A digital payment solutions app is helping car guards in South Africa to increase their daily earnings and transition to a cashless society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341175,"featured_media":561684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10106],"tags":[97132,97131],"class_list":["post-561682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-kosta-scholiadis","tag-street-wallet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561682"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":561693,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561682\/revisions\/561693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}