uKheshe – A Digital Banking Platform For Your SMME. uKheshe is a digital platform that helps banks and telcos provide SMMEs with affordable digital banking and payment services founded in 2018 by Jason Penton who is the Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and Clayton Hayward who is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
The company is focused on providing financial technology solutions that will accelerate economic growth for the under banked allowing full financial inclusion. South Africa has an estimated 11 million number of individuals who are unbanked and digital services such as uKheshe are working tirelessly to combat this problem.
In an interview with BIZ COMMUNITY Hayward said, “Financial inclusion goes beyond consumers and plays a far greater role in the lives of small-scale entrepreneurs. The gains for these informal merchants are significant, bringing income for the community at large. We have seen this as so many of our users have trebled their businesses since using our platform to trade.”
uKheshe believes that this industry of informal banking is now an accessible and lucrative growth market for its banking partners. The founders of this business have seen significant growth in the company since it started as they have managed to partner with Nedbank and MasterCard. Its partnership with MasterCard brings mobile payments to unbanked South Africans such as car guards.
“We’ve all been there where you’d like to tip your car guard or buy a newspaper from a street vendor, but you don’t have coins or any cash to do so. Through our partnership with uKheshe, we are making it easy for Masterpass users to pay anyone from anywhere in a matter of seconds with the device in their pockets- the mobile phone.” said Mark Elliot, the Division President of MasterCard Southern Africa in a MasterCard press release.
To sign up for the uKheshe card, simply dial *120*822274# and follow the menu.
