South Africa's kasi economy is resilient, substantial and largely invisible to the national payment systems built to manage and service digital transactions. That invisibility is not an accident. It is the outcome of decades of infrastructure that was never designed with the informal economy in mind.
Cash dominates the kasi for entirely rational reasons. It is free to use, settles instantly, requires no connectivity and trust in it was earned over generations. When a trader accepts cash, both parties walk away satisfied. The goods change hands, the money changes hands and the transaction is complete. If something goes wrong, the resolution is immediate and human. You go back to the retailer, you return the item, you get your cash back.
Digital payments do not yet offer the same experience. When a customer taps a card and walks out with their goods, the retailer does not receive those funds immediately. Under South Africa's current national payment system, settlement can take one to two days. That gap is not a perception problem. It is a structural one, and it is one of the primary reasons digital trust has been so difficult to build in this market.
The fee problem is just as real
Beyond settlement, transaction fees create a second barrier. The feedback we get from traders is direct: "The banks are eating my money." That is not entirely accurate, but it is understandable.
There are multiple actors involved in making a digital transaction possible, and each layer of that infrastructure carries a cost. In 30 years since 1994, South Africa has produced only one transaction type that is genuinely fee-friendly for this market: PayShap. Altron FinTech intends to leverage it as part of the company's payments strategy for the informal economy, and the South African Reserve Bank's move to allow non-bank companies to access the infrastructure directly, without bank sponsorship, makes that a real and near-term possibility.
Visibility is the real prize
The case for digital adoption goes well beyond convenience or fee savings. When an informal business transacts digitally, it begins to exist in the data. Transaction history, revenue patterns, business volume. That data trail, over time, becomes a credit profile. And a credit profile is the foundation for accessing growth capital.
A cash-only business leaves no record that the formal financial system can read. That invisibility has a direct cost. It closes the door to credit, to investment and to the kind of capital that could meaningfully scale a successful informal business. Digitising the kasi economy is not about bringing informal traders into compliance with a system designed for someone else. It is about giving them the economic visibility they have never had, and the access to capital that comes with it.
Trust is built person to person
Altron FinTech is not waiting for the infrastructure to be perfect before it acts. The company's Kasi Sales Squad model has demonstrated something the industry needs to hear. Technology enables, but people convert. When it deployed locally recruited youth into Soweto, people who understood the community and came from the same streets as the traders they were working with, adoption followed. Trust followed.
The initiative is now expanding into Ekurhuleni, the Johannesburg CBD and Cape Town because the model works. Not because the platform is exceptional, but because the human connection is. Trust in the kasi economy is not built through product features or marketing campaigns. It is earned through presence, through relevance and through people.
An invisible economy produces invisible policy
There is a national interest argument here that extends well beyond fintech. Current economic policy is largely shaped by data from the formal economy, where transactions and employment are easier to track. The informal economy, street vendors, spaza shops, home-based businesses, room rentals, small repair services, contributes enormously to livelihoods and community resilience, yet remains difficult to measure and therefore easy to underestimate.
When informal businesses transact digitally, that changes. Policymakers gain access to real economic intelligence. The scale and resilience of the sector becomes legible. Targeted interventions become possible. In my view, cutting interest rates by around two percentage points alone could reduce unemployment by 4% to 5% as economic activity accelerates. But to make decisions of that kind with confidence, you need data. Digitising the kasi economy is how you get it.
What it will take
The informal market is not unsophisticated, risk-averse or resistant to change. The entrepreneurs running businesses in South Africa's townships are commercially sharp and very clear about what value looks like for them. What they are is underserved. Underserved markets do not need charity. They need fit-for-purpose infrastructure, fair pricing and partners willing to understand the context before designing the solution.
That is what Altron FinTech is building towards. The regulatory environment is opening up. The infrastructure is improving. And the human model for building trust at community level is proven and scaling.
The kasi economy is ready to grow. The question is whether the industry and government will move with the urgency that opportunity deserves. I believe they will.
Learn more about how digital payments can work for your business: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0wPy9L0
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