King Price cuts claims turnaround times with AI
AI is no longer a future-facing concept in insurance. Increasingly, it is becoming a practical business tool that helps insurers make better decisions, respond more quickly, and protect the integrity of the claims process. At King Price Insurance, enterprise AI (EAI)...
Visa makes the smartphone a cash register
Visa has announced new capabilities across Visa Accept and Visa Direct that are designed to expand how smartphones can accept and send digital payments. The updates are intended to make it easier for small businesses in emerging markets — from street vendors to...
Banks urged to reuse fraud data to fix broken dispute processes, rebuild trust in digital banking
Fraud dispute resolution is often manual and can take weeks. Research shows 73% of customers say their loyalty is heavily influenced by how fraud is handled. While customer satisfaction and retention may largely lie in the ambit of the CMO, a large part of the...
Kandua launches AI-powered home companion
Kandua, a wholly owned Santam subsidiary, has announced the launch of Jess, an artificial Intelligence (AI) powered home companion aimed at improving trust, safety and certainty in the home services sector. Jess is a conversational AI interface that brings to life the...
Visa, FNB, RMB partner to launch Visa Commercial Pay
Visa, in partnership with First National Bank (FNB) and Rand Merchant Bank (RMB), have announced the launch of Visa Commercial Pay (VCP) in South Africa. Visa Commercial Pay is a fully integrated business-to-business (B2B) payment solution designed to simplify how...
Banks need a decisioning backbone for the AI era
For years, banks have modernised around channels. For example, mobile apps became better, onboarding became faster and customer engagement became more personalised. These improvements matter because customers feel them every day. But there is a more difficult shift...
SA’s digital wallet goldrush has a licensing problem
South Africa’s prepaid card and digital wallet market is valued at $13,5-billion as of 2026, with an anticipated compound annual growth rate of 11,9%, reaching $21,2-billion by 2030. By Paul Wenborn, product manager, and Yaaseen Sheik, company counsel at Ecentric...
Kwik Payments goes live with ACI
Global payments company ACI Worldwide has announced that Kwik Payments, a South Africa-based payments service provider (PSP), has successfully gone live on the ACI Payments Orchestration Platform. The partnership represents a pivotal milestone in ACI’s expansion...
AI makes it profitable to find and serve those invisible to legacy lending
The credit market is the engine room of the South African economy, but for many financial institutions and aspiring business owners alike, that engine is currently running on a partial cylinder. By Eshmael Mpabanga, regional head: southern Africa and senior...
From greylist to greyed out: The hidden risk in SA’s payment infrastructure
South Africa has been off the greylist for just over four months, and now we risk hitting a different, perhaps more worrying, kind of greyish trap: being "greyed out" of the global SWIFT payments network. By Marna Roos, senior client consultant at AfriGIS But the...
Nedbank partners with Jumo to expand financial inclusion
As living costs rise, many South Africans are finding it increasingly difficult to build emergency savings, leaving them vulnerable when unexpected expenses arise. Research by Nedbank reveals consumers' growing preference for smaller loan amounts over shorter terms...
Banks have digitised the wrong things, and customers are paying for it
Technology has advanced. Human needs haven’t. The industry has confused removing friction with delivering care, writes Bradley Elliott, CEO of RelyComply. Your chatbot just told a grieving widow to check the FAQ. Somewhere, a product team celebrated the deflection...