LegendTags has announced what it believes to be a landmark milestone in cashless tipping: Beltrand, a car park attendant on Cape Town’s Atlantic Seaboard, has become the first worker on the Paytip.me platform to receive over 1 000 successful digital tip transactions.
South Africa’s shift to digital payments is accelerating fast. Contactless transactions now account for over 60% of face-to-face payments (Visa, 2025), and “I don’t have cash” is no longer an excuse, it’s a structural reality for a growing share of the population.
For the 6,8-million South Africans who depend on tips for income, car guard’s chief among them, that shift has quietly meant less money in their pockets.
Beltrand’s 1 000 transactions represent more than a number. They are 1 000 individual moments where someone chose to say, “I don’t have cash, but I still want to give” and had a tool that made it possible. In practical terms, they translate into thousands of rand in earnings that might otherwise have been lost entirely.
Paytip.me makes tipping as simple as a phone number. Customers enter the guard’s number or scan a QR code, choose an amount from R5 upward, and pay by card or mobile wallet in under 30 seconds. No app. No login. No friction.
“This milestone shows that cashless doesn’t have to mean tipless,” says Steven Cohen, founder and chief technology officer of LegendTags. “Simple technology can protect livelihoods. When you remove friction, people continue to give.”
Darryl Froom, founder and CEO of LegendTags, believes Beltrand’s achievement is the first of many and that every informal worker deserves an equal opportunity to participate in the digital economy.