South African digital bank, Bettr, nears launch: an interview with the founders
“It's incredible what happens if you ask people for help, and if you truly have something that people believe in, you can make anything happen,” Tobie van Zyl.
One of South Africa’s leading technology and startup podcasts, TechCentral, spoke to Bettr co-founders CEO, Tobie van Zyl and CTO, Andrzej Stempowski, about the long, expensive and complex road to getting a fintech off the ground in South Africa.
Listen to their conversation 👂
Read the full interview👇
[ Duncan ]
I'm Duncan McLeod and this is the Tech Central Podcast. Now I get a lot of press releases in my inbox everyday, but one that arrived a couple of days ago really caught my eye was from a startup fintech player called Bettr...Now Bettr describes itself as a new challenger in the finance sector and aims to, and I quote, “introduce South Africa to a new digital-first culture of money and a better alternative to the dominant world of finance.”
In short, the company wants to shake up the world of banking.
So the founders of Bettr have kindly agreed to come on to the Tech Central podcast today and tell us more about what it is they're doing. I'd like to welcome Bettr’s CEO, Tobie Van Zyl, and his business partner and the company's Chief Technology officer, and that is Andrzej Stempowski. I hope I pronounced your name correctly there. Good to see you both. And thanks for taking the time to be here. Tobie, you’re in J-Bay and Andrzej, you're in Perth, Australia right now?
[ Anj ]
Yes. Great. Good to meet you. Duncan. Thank you for having us.
[ Duncan ]
It's a pleasure. Yeah, what are you doing in Jeffrey's Bay of all places, Tobie?
[ Tobie ]
I surf and I work, enjoying the company remotely, and also being close to the things that you love – it helps you to stay sane, especially when you're building a company like Bettr.
[ Duncan ]
Right, right. Andrzej, I believe you're stuck in Perth because of the lockdown rules.
[ Anj ]
Yeah...So with Corona we found ourselves in Perth. We spent ages in Sydney, Australia. So we're quite familiar with the country. And yeah, we're just riding up the storm here. Hopefully, we can come home soon.
[ Duncan ]
Great stuff. Well, we're going to talk about Bettr now, and it really does look like an interesting proposition. It's aimed at Gen Z...and millennials. Now, Tobie, let me start with you. You guys have been working on this project for several years. What are the origins of this idea? And how do you know Anj? And how did it all come to fruition?
[ Tobie ]
It feels like ages ago, but it also feels so fresh. So I've been in financial services technology for the last 15 years. So one of the first companies that I launched back in 2011, was called Money Smart. And Money Smart was a personal finance management tool very much like 22 Seven today, to aggregate all of your financial information in a single place.
And I think that's where the penny dropped. For me, when we started looking at how many people were connecting multiple accounts, it was very evident that the average South African has more than one bank account. When you dive deep into the data and you engage with your customers, you quickly realise that no single bank provides all of the value, right?
People are charged exorbitant fees – R360 billion to be accurate in the financial year 2018 to 2019. Half of that was transactional fees amongst the Big 5 Banks. If you think about it, the average person has to work at least half a day, or earn a half a day's minimum wage, just to afford their bank fees.
So for us, that's a huge barrier, especially to young people. Secondly, when it comes to accessing larger financial services – the old traditional concept of building a credit score and becoming worthy – creditworthy – why are young people excluded from participating in any of these credit or wealth-generating activities? When you graduate, if you need a personal loan or credit card, you really get charged the highest interest rate, which penalises you when you're just about to take part in the working class. That's unfair. We believe that needs to change, and digital banking with financial intelligence and big data can really drive that change for us.
[ Duncan ]
Okay, so Andrzej, tell me, how did this all come about? What's involved in building a business like this? And are you taking on the big banks?
[ Anj ]
I came back from Sydney, Australia in early 2016, with my wife and two kids. And soon afterwards, I met up with Tobie through a mutual friend that I'd studied engineering with. And basically ever since, Tobie sold me on the vision that we've been working on, as you mentioned, called Bettr. So for the last 4 years, we've been solidly building this digital bank.
I think that there's definitely a space for us today. All the traditional financial institutions are under a lot of pressure with all the changes in tech over recent years. The era of open banking is around the corner. As you can see what's happened in Europe with PSD2 [open-banking] regulations, so I think that we’re definitely competing with the banks. We want to own the relationship with the customers specifically. We will have a different business model: we will originate products in a different way through our platform. We won't provide the product itself, but we will match our users to the best products out there. 🤝
[ Duncan ]
So are you going to be a licensed financial services institution? Are you going to take deposits yourself? Or will you work through an actual financial services partner to do that?
[ Tobie ]
So we partnered with a sponsor bank in South Africa. There was no need for acquiring a heavy banking licence, especially predominantly because our model is not to take deposits to lend. For that matter, we wanted to provide the lowest cost possible transactional and savings capability and offer customers no-fee banking plus interest on their balances. So with that, we would then lower the actual fees and lower the barrier, in terms of costs, and provide a greater experience.
Through the data, we're going to create a new credit-worthiness alternative, and that will then be published through an open API to a marketplace. Our business model is that of a marketplace with third-party apps, and developers and institutions can come and co-create and build products in accordance to the needs of our community. 💳
When it comes to the licensing side, we remain a technology company first that does banking better. We do not want to be bombarded with a higher level of governance and regulation, although we need to comply with a sponsor bank in line with the South African Reserve Bank's regulations. 📝
For us, we believe that the marketplace business model is great because multiple products and services can now be matched and profiled to a single consumer, as opposed to consumers being multi-banked, incurring multiple fees across many institutions.
When a customer transact with us, we have two revenue streams: net interest income and interchange. We earn from traditional card and peer-to-peer payments. The commissions that we earn from the marketplace are on a transaction-only basis. We only make money when our customers are spending or saving money. 📈
[ Duncan ]
Right. So do you work with anyone in the market whose products you feel add value to your end customers?
[ Tobie ]
You know, that's a tough question. I think traditional big institutions as we know them – the green ones, the blue ones, the red ones, you know – they are all irrelevant for Gen Z especially, and millennial customers. We've all grown up with them. We've seen them for the last 35 years – I'm giving away our age here. But you know this. Nothing has changed.
And I think the questions that Gen Z, especially younger individuals, are asking is: “Why are there over 100+ pension-plan companies that's banking, R14 million in salaries, yet South Africa only has an 8% retirement rate? So the dream of retirement is a myth, and young people are asking these questions. Why is somebody who's managing your money called a ‘broker’? We don't have the answers for this anymore, and these are the questions that's coming from this generation. 🤔
They have been born into the age of the Internet: they’re mobile-first, savvy, digital consumers, and they do the research themselves. And they are completely opposed to the traditional incumbent system. Because looking back now, every 10 years this traditional financial system with traditional finance products has failed them, has failed their parents...So change is needed, and we believe that the way to do this is to engage with like-minded institutions that, number one – understands the vision of the customer – because Bettr is a company that builds products according to a first-principles design-thinking.
So the customer really designs the product; we are just the guy that executes it. With that in mind, it's important also to understand that the customer must be part of the co-creation process. It's our business model to outsource our business model to customers. It's far-fetched if you ask any of the Big 5 Banks. If their customers can dictate their revenue model today, I think banking would look completely different. I think that's one of the biggest advantages that we have from a bottom-up approach: to connect with our community. Hear their wants and needs, get the features that they like, designed for the products that [they] would want to use, and then go and connect with the ecosystem out there – especially all these bright new fintechs that do not have a relatable and relevant fintech-only bank.
We're sitting with a lot of new fintech insurance-on-demand, alternative lending, zero fees, zero-interest credit advanced products out there that do not have access to unique account numbers for disbursement or the collection of premiums – as an example. We can change all of that on a fractional cost basis. So we're going to open up for fintechs, and we invite every fintech out there that's listening to this to come and collaborate with us. Help design with Anj and build the product that consumers are wanting. 🔊
[ Duncan ]
Anj you mentioned open banking and I've read a little bit about this, specifically in the context of the European banking system. I know there's some regulations around this, but what exactly is ‘open banking’? What is it going to mean for the South African financial services space? And why is it important for Bettr?
[ Anj ]
I think, fundamentally, a large institution might be quite good at a lot of things. So they might have a good insurance product, they might have a decent savings product and an okay mortgage. But they're not the best one single thing.
If – for example – last year I chose to bank with FNB, because there's a good interest rate on a savings account. But this year I want to buy a house. I'm going to go and shop around for a mortgage. I fill out an application 5 times at 5 different banks, and I finally settle on a mortgage with ABSA. So then you can see the problem right there. The way that tech has advanced over the last few years, we shouldn't be having to do that all the time.
The problem is already being solved with PSD 2 overseas. It's an open banking initiative in Europe, where the regulation dictates that financial institutions must allow third parties to access customer data if the customer has given explicit consent to do so. Ultimately, what it's doing is taking away the competitive advantage from these financial institutions who have this quarantine around the user's data. And it gives customers access to shop around for competitive financial services from other banks or fintechs. 🛒
This is the start of an era of open banking, where the shift and focus is going to be towards providing the best, most competitive products to the customer. That's ultimately what Bettr is trying to do in the South African sense: where we can cherry-pick the best, most applicable products out there, build up a financial profile of the customer, and match our customers to the best that's out there through open banking. 🔓
The way that Bettr benefits compared to traditional institutions, like Tobie mentioned earlier, it's not part of our business model to make money off mortgages. It's not that we're not originating them, so we're not cannibalising our own market whereas traditional institutions would be if they're going to go and refer their customers to other mortgage providers. They're cannibalising the mortgage business. So we see a huge opportunity there to actually open up banking for everyone. And hopefully we can do it for Gen Zs in South Africa to start.
[ Duncan ]
Right. You mentioned Gen Zs a number of times. You've mentioned Millennials. What age group, specifically, are we looking at here?
[ Tobie ]
Gen Zs – they are 25 years and younger – they are a third of Africa's population. It's projected that by the end of 2023, they’ll have R120 billion in disposable income. We are certainly positioned amongst the 16-year-olds. It's proven in industry that as South Africans we don't really switch banks – we just open up new accounts.
The advantage is to be young and relatable, where customers already are served. There's no bank for your Xbox, really. There's no digital bank that integrates into your social life, and there's no bank that really prices for micro-payments. You know, when you're a gamer: on a game you're spending like $1 every one minute, and you might just top-up frequently. I've seen a gamer’s bank statements. It's insane – like 35 transactions in a single day. That's a lot of money! And it comes at a high cost for traditional institutions on very small fractional payments. 🎮
The 16-year-old is very important for us, because we also believe they're going to shape and lead the future. We want to be associated with the way that they view the world and be right behind them as opposed to top-down to them all the way up to [age] 35.
Like I said, the majority of us are so credit-thin. We don't have sufficient credit scores, we're required to take on expensive debt in order to access good data. It sounds very counterintuitive. For us, when you're between the ages of 16 and 35, that's where we can unlock the most value and grow with you. So we provide you with data, tools, and most importantly, also financial literacy. From your first R100 or R1000 in pocket-money, the moment it hits your Bettr account you start earning interest. Getting cash back and you start investing and saving that – managing your money and growing your money as you adult.
It's a large market, especially in the African continent, and we do have aspirations. Next month, we're going to lay out quite a nice initiative...and we'll be able to share a little bit more about our African aspirations as well.
[ Duncan ]
All right, so let's say I'm an 18-year-old. I'm over here, a listener listening to this podcast, and I think this sounds quite interesting. I think I'm going to sign up as soon as it's available. What should I be expecting? What services will you be offering on launch? Will I get a transactional bank or bank card? Will I be able to use it to make payments at retail stores, for example? Online, what sort of products and services would I be able to sign up for on Day One?
[ Tobie ]
We'll give you a high- level idea. Towards the end of this year we're going to reveal a little bit more about how all these things work exactly. In terms of the value proposition:
- Zero monthly fees: all the transactions you make inside our app’s ecosystem are completely free.
- Your whole KYC process is done within our app in 3 minutes or less.
- There's no physical branches, or physical retail or even couriers needed to accept your card or activate it – you can transact the moment that you've onboarded. So we have very low distribution, onboarding and origination costs of an account.
- Once your account is opened, you get two accounts: you get a transmission or transactional one, and you get a savings one, so that they carry an interest rate, which we will also announce is very high. It's very competitive, in order to be attractive to the customer.
- Traditional services: so you can make electronic transfers to traditional incumbent banks.
- But you can also do free peer-to-peer transfers, things like splitting a bill is quite a nice feature.
- And then value-added services: airtime, electricity vouchers, mobile data and so forth.
It’s very, very robust in that sense. What excites us most is just the execution of this product. It is absolutely beautiful. It fits our brand and it fits the lifestyle of the customer. It's really lifestyle-oriented. 💅
It's also designed for multifaceted income streams. We’re launching with personal accounts, predominantly. And then our roadmap for [2022] is SME accounts, because Gen Z is a multifaceted income-earning consumer. They are not going to university, they're certainly not going to stay there as the only jobs a lot of them have are side-gigs and side hustles exploring and unlocking their own creativity to create new income streams. Before you know it, we need a business structure in order to accelerate their entrepreneurial ventures. So we're very much for the entrepreneurial mindset – lifestyle banking to start off – but ultimately a business banking service for entrepreneurs as well. 💼
[ Duncan ]
And your people's needs change over time. People's financial needs become quite complex over time, particularly if they're entrepreneurs and they're starting their own companies.
Do you see yourself growing with these customers and starting to offer a whole panoply of financial services over time? Or would you expect these companies that these individuals start, start to work with multiple financial service providers over time?
[ Tobie ]
I think that refers to Anj and his vision of the marketplace. So we want to be able to grow with you. From acorn to oak tree – that’s the approach. And the nice thing about that is we don't need to do everything ourselves. We're open banking, there's the best-of-breed fintechs out there that's targeting multiple verticals, age groups and demographics of the market – more of them now as a fintech-first banking infrastructure.
They can integrate into, connect and distribute and sell their products to the customers that we will acquire. So the one hand washes the other. It's a partnership – it's an ecosystem – not an ego system.
[ Duncan ]
Right! If you were to describe Bettr in, say, 10 words, how would you describe the company and what it's trying to do?
[ Tobie ]
So, we’re digital-only banking that allows you to invest in yourself.
[ Duncan ]
Good! Short and simple. 🍬
[To Anj] Let me bring you back in here, I imagine that there's quite a lot of work that has to go into the backend – the technology platform that you're building to launch this digital bank. What platform are you building it on? What is the sort of work? What is the work in terms of software engineering to launch the service?
[ Anj ]
Oh, so on the customer-facing side to start, we've got a React Native app, which means it's one code base and it compiles into both Android and iOS native apps.
The app, like Tobie mentioned earlier, takes care of a complete end-to-end customer onboarding. So we scan, we take videos of the customer, we make them say a few things. We scan the identity documents, we extract the ID numbers into Home Affairs verification, and we do a comparison between the ID document image and the video to make sure, with likeness detection, that it's the same person. 🔎
And ultimately, at the end, we provide a fully functional bank account. We also provide a Visa digital card, and then the app will talk to the Bettr backend through a Graph QL interface. Graph QL was developed by Facebook: it's just a data-query language for APIs and an alternative to integration. It's 100% in the cloud. ☁️
It's also AWS (Amazon Web Services) in the Cape Town region, which came around in June. Nearly all the services are sitting there, there are one or two AWS services that we use that aren't available in Cape Town; they're sitting in Ireland.
And then, yeah, there’s the actual code – the logic sitting in Python is Lambdas. So it's serverless. We have an instance for our core banking application, and then we've got maybe 3 key integrations with third parties. The first one is CMS. So that's our college card management service, which is PCI compliant (they issue the card pins). And they have an integration to the Visa token store for digital payments – a second big integration into our alliance banking partner. That's batch integration day end for file settlements: transactions, Ficker reporting, fraud, all of that kind of stuff. And then the third big integration is into Gemalto, who's assisting with our security... They are used to decrypt OTPs as part of authentication and sensitive transactional information. 👨💻
[ Duncan ]
Interesting! You say you are going to be using the AWS region here in Cape Town. The arrival of hyperscale cloud computing has made it significantly easier to launch a digital bank like you guys are doing.
[ Anj ]
Like you can't believe! As you know, it's actually been around for a while now, just not specifically in South Africa. The Cape Town region helps us because the regulators are a lot happier when all the sensitive information is sitting within South Africa's borders. So we are very grateful. It simplifies our regulation roadmap now that it's sitting in Cape Town.
The main benefit, especially for fintechs, is the low barrier to entry. You can spin up servers and applications almost on free tiers nowadays, where you don't need to provision big expensive servers and hardware infrastructure – or even worry about the security of the infrastructure. It's all taken care of by AWS. So that's a huge benefit for us.
And then when it comes to high availability requirements, disaster recovery, data encryption, security of the actual security of the infrastructure, we really don't have to worry too much about that stuff. It's all taken care of by AWS, as long as you follow best practices.
There's hundreds of white papers out there and huge corporations that use them. Literally click a few buttons and you can get going. So it's been an absolutely massive change. It's been one of the big tech advances of our time, for sure. 🚀
[ Duncan ]
Interesting, very interesting. Now, you mentioned the regulatory side of things. What sort of regulatory oversight is involved in launching your business?
[ Tobie ]
In terms of regulation, there is a function the Reserve Bank has provided certain commercial banks with – what we call a Guidance Note 5 (GN5), and that's where a licenced commercial registered retail bank in South Africa can really outsource its core functions to a third party institution.
Now, it might seem as simple as that but it is not. Our journey has taken 8 months to prepare an application to be GN5-ready with the SOP. And that process you undergo with your sponsor bank. There is so much paperwork, so much governance, so much compliance going into that we had to undergo: multiple audits, the lawyers audited us last year in April, Deloitte had to audit us, we had to comply with all those rules and regulations. And then you go through your submission process after eight to nine months. If you're lucky, if you know what you're doing, that can take another 6 months. So just the regulatory journey is about a 15 to 16 month process before you finally can actually launch. And even if you get to launch, there are going to be a few terms and conditions that you will have to satisfy, but over a period of time.
So in 2019, we were able to launch in February, but a lot has happened. We've restructured our entire business. We've restructured our regulatory set up with our alliance bank as we wanted to expand our product stack. We wanted to improve and refactor our technology like Anj has been doing for a year and a half now.
We could have launched almost two or three times, but it's a very capital intensive journey. It's a long regulatory path that you have to walk and there's very little investment that is going to fund your regulatory path with no success. There's no guarantee of that. So the barrier to entry is extremely high. It's taken us five years to be launched, really. So it's no easy feat. We don't have big backers and balance sheets, you know, that you can satisfy the regulatory [requirements] with. But we've been very fortunate that we could stick it through with a great sponsor bank to help us through the process.
[ Duncan ]
Do you think the level of regulation is justified? Or was it too onerous?
[ Tobie ]
Definitely too onerous. I mean, similar to open banking, you get these fintech payment licences in other countries like the UK, the US, Hong Kong, India. That's definitely a lower cost barrier just to simply get into an international payments network. But we have to go and set up a full-stack bank without holding a full-stack licence or Tier One or Tier Two licence in order to access the payments book of South Africa.
Now we know the SARB is working on innovative fintech initiatives, but therse’ no direct talks about a fintech payments-only licence that allows a fintech to receive a deposit, and then have oversight or manage payments. And we hope that that's going to go that way.
I mean, there's only 7 retail banks in this market. There’s still a big playground to serve a lot of underserved customers, and more competition drives down price. In digital, it's really about democratization. We would want to stick it out. But, you know, we don't feel we need any of those big licence categories. We do hope that something comes through that makes it easier, but that also means we'll get a lot more competition – which we will welcome. But yeah, it's a long journey. Our regulatory framework is highly protected. So we have a lot of respect [for it], knowing how things work in Europe, the UK and all around the world. South Africa is a very highly protected, very well orchestrated regulatory system. So we're glad that we could pass the test.
[ Duncan ]
Right, right. So how have you got to this point, Tobie? Has this all been self funded? Do you have angel investors? Do you have VC guys behind you?
[ Tobie ]
Yeah, quite interesting. This is the most painful journey I think any entrepreneur can walk. We predominantly wanted to self-fund the business.
And there's a number of reasons. The first reason was, we did not want to be under pressure of quick returns. This is a long term vision for us. We are in this for the long run. As far as we can see, we are not building a company that we flip overnight. This is truly to make an impact. So 25 of us, the team – the co-founders (we all call ourselves co-founders) we've come together, we've put in our own hard cash. We were lucky that we had some success in previous ventures and recently before we started the business, that we could afford it. And that helped us to clearly shape the vision, and to build a bond with the team and shape the culture of the company.
Then we started raising a bit of money in 2017. That actually came to us. So a lot of early stage backers heard about us and enquired about us and said, “Look, you know, this is still an idea. We'd love to be part of the ride.” And we started taking very early-stage money, but the regulatory process to get through was an extremely long journey. And that's where you're not going to get any funding. So we had to bridge it ourselves. Ran a few projects, raised a bit of money, putting more than everything that we have – and then friends, family, fools, dogs, cats, everything that has one Rand started investing. I think we're so grateful for all the people that backed us. I mean, we had one stage where we had like a R400 000 debt to our landlord, and he converted all of that into an investment in equity. And he spoke about us to other friends. Those guys were like, “That's crazy!” But they wanted to invest anyway. You'll see very soon – we'll put a release out about all the people that funded us, how they funded us, and how we've managed to make it through.
Recently we've obtained some really good capital. We're going to announce our partnerships very soon. But it's been a hard, hard slog. This is a very capital-intensive business. It requires tens of millions of rands for you to get through, to get to live. And, you know, our journey has just started. So we are going to be on quite a long capital fundraising journey until we become profitable.
I think that is the number one goal for us as a company: we want to be profitable. We're not chasing the Silicon Valley pipe dreams of a unicorn, we want to build a profitable long-term sustainable business.
[ Duncan ]
I think you've put a halt to any prospective competitors from volleying! You know, after that, that’s a warning when you say it like that.
[ Tobie ]
I mean, venture capitalists told us. They didn't tell us at the time – they told us more recently – that when we started, there were about six other look-alikes. Who do you fund? You wouldn't know. And they [the lookalikes] all unfortunately passed away, and we still survived. Luckily, we could get a bit of money that's still on the table after COVID.
[ Duncan ]
Right. I was gonna ask, Andrzej, let me bring you in here. How has COVID impacted your development and your launch plans?
[ Anj ]
In a way, it's actually been quite a good thing for our model. Because from a product perspective, we're a digital bank – it's digital onboarding. There's no human interaction anyway.
Pre-COVID, we did have plans to launch with the plastic card. And we did change that to be a digital card only, which I think was a great move, because it's just more scalable, more exponential, and a lot cheaper to get going. From a depth perspective, I mean, we're all we're all on the cloud anyway. It hasn't really hasn't impacted us too much. Apart from me being 6 hours ahead, so I'm having late nights. But in a way, it actually works. Kids go to sleep and I can smash it for another 6 hours and actually enjoy it that way.
The devs have always been remote. The resources – we do miss the catch-ups and the bonding – but most of the guys have been remote in the UAE. I've had Ali, a VP of engineering. He was cruising around the islands for a while still working full-time. If they can do the job, that's fine. We don't believe they have to sit in an office everyday. All our services are cloud-based anyway. So it doesn't matter where you are.
[ Duncan ]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[ Anj ]
And also, just to add to that: the adoption rates due to COVID has just pretty much accelerated users (the customers) from embracing the inevitable. I think digital payments are coming, and there's always going to be a resistance to that. Just like with Zoom conferences and (face-to-face) meetings, once people understand how it works, it'll be difficult for them to revert back to the old way of doing things. And I think that if that extends into digital banking, people will embrace digital-only banks a lot easier now than they would have before COVID.
[ Tobie ]
It's definitely impacted our commercial model, you know. Just in terms of costs: the cost that we incur to maintain an active account, the costs that we have to originate an account needed, physical retail distribution, card production, all of those old legacy processes embedded and it helps us to optimize for speed.
We always have to be digitally connected and communicate with customers. Customers will always know that this is digital-first. It's digital-only available. And that's been great. 📲
I think the next big thing that we're looking forward to is 5G, which brings the ability to process transactions quicker, faster, and the ability to analyse data to recommend a better way of spending or saving money to an end consumer. The way to originate, let's say, a personal finance or a loan application will be much quicker on-demand on a real-time single button that you tap, streaming the information to you, the customer, to make more informed financial planning and purchasing decisions.The whole world is now mobile-first, predominantly, and we were very excited that our product has been optimised for that.
[ Duncan ]
Okay! I'm actually interested in the Visa digital card that you're going to be launching with. You won't be issuing plastic to your customers and how's that going to work in practice, Anj? Do I pay with my smartphone if I'm going to Pick ‘n Pay [a local supermarket]? 🛒
[ Anj ]
So you get issued with a token. The token is a digital representation of a physical card, and you can load that card into Apple Pay, Samsung Pay – whatever NFC-enabled payments application you use, and you can use that to pay. You can also, from within the app, pay using QR-code for Snapscan, MasterPass, and Stepper. E-commerce is the same: you can enter your details, you can view your card pin, enter it, and do online shopping just like before. 🛍️
[ Duncan ]
Okay...But to be developing this I believe you've got a forum – or is there some way that your community of interested or prospective – or I guess you'd call them enthusiastic prospective customers – are actually helping you to build this bank? Take us through how that works, and whether the inputs you've been getting have really helped you in shaping the direction that you're going to take.
[ Tobie ]
Yeah, look – we wouldn't have would not have done this any other way.
The first one is a blank piece of paper. So we went out to campuses and we went out to schools, and we asked young people: “What’s your view of money? Like if you had to change the concept of money – what does that mean to you from an emotional level to a tangible physical level? And if you see it differently, how would you do it?”
And they said, “Look, we don't care about banks. We want banking. What we want you to do change is the culture of money and accessibility, and so forth.” So they helped us to shape the narrative. And that's what we're busy with...
Right now, you can visit our website (bettr.app), and you can sign up to our WhatsApp community. When in that community, there are all the activities that we are following for the next few months. One of them is: we're releasing app features every single month and giving our community first access to view them and add their suggested features....
We absolutely loved working with young people. They are bright, they're creative, they see the world completely different. And it's very clear that banking – even though these incumbent banks have digital apps – is not going to look anything like the customer wants.
[ Duncan ]
So those customers have been assisting, they'll be the first to get access, will they?
[ Tobie ]
Yes. We're preparing to onboard the first 10,000 customers, but in the meantime, we're trying to accommodate as many people as we possibly can.
[ Duncan ]
Okay, so launching in beta next year...and when will you launch to everyone?
[ Tobie ]
No – that's open beta for us. So we already started testing, and are currently testing the app and getting a few community members coming in. We can't accommodate everyone at this point. So the key for us is to remain focused, andthe WhatsApp community really just makes it all orchestrated. We have zero cost of acquisition right now because one person tells another person and we're grown by 300–400 people a day.
Duncan, if you haven't signed up yet, you should! You could win that merch tomorrow!
[ Duncan ]
Unfortunately I'm way north of your target age. 🤣
I did have a look at your website....You've actually partnered with hip hop artists to launch a music video. Tell us about that.
[ Tobie ]
Yeah, so that was a wild idea by the team. Terri De Sousa and Rasheed Ferguson head up the brand. They really wanted to make an impact. I think that's reflective of our culture.
So if we look at banking today, it really looks and feels like the Industrial Age. For the 21st century, we wanted to make something that's relevant, relatable in the language and in the culture of our customers' eyes. The best way we felt to do that is to demonstrate that we are just like them. There's nothing fancy about me or Anj, anyone on our team wears a suit and dies. 💀 ...No ego.
For us, the best way to announce that we believe the youth deserves better – we felt nothing brings people together more than music does. What we did is we put a brief out and we said: “Look, we are creating a new culture of money. The best way to do it is to rock! Write a song about this and make a music video that really demonstrates who we are as a brand statement.”
All these artists started connecting with us, including Celebrity Services Africa as a celebrity services management company. They started reaching out and having a chat with Costa Titch and Dee Koala. They bring new dynamics to South African business culture: female empowerment, mixed race...We want complete inclusivity…So we made a music video in 6 weeks! Everyone came together. It was extremely hard work, but it was so well received.
[ Duncan ]
When was it launched?
[ Tobie ]
It was on Friday.
[ Duncan ]
So it's just been released. Okay.
[ Tobie ]
And it's going to go live on YouTube this Friday. It's already had over, like, 25,000 people watch it.
[ Duncan ]
And people can see it at Bettr.app, that's right?
[ Tobie ]
That's correct yeah.
[ Duncan ]
And Tobie, you and Anj– are you both in the video as well? 😏
[ Tobie ]
Haha no we are too old. 👴
[ Duncan ]
I didn't think I saw you in there but if you are in there I'm definitely going back to watch it!
[ Tobie ]
No but some of our team members are there like: Jamie Wyngaard (Head of Community) and Rasheed Ferguson (Creative Director and Producer). We just love to stand back and support the artists. We've had so much fun with the artists as ambassadors. And, you know, we walked off there, and we now have 60 more friends. It took about 65 people to build that whole production.
We did it all in four days. It was an incredible amount of work! The planning, the logistics – and again – we almost had no money to do it.
[ Duncan ]
Right! 🤯
[ Tobie ]
So we just figured it out – and we had a few angels. No people believed in us and all these other people came together and they said, “Look, if it works, it works.” It's a great platform for all of us who believe in the vision, and they all came together, invested themselves and we made it happen. It's incredible what happens if you ask people for help, and if you truly have something that people believe in, you can make anything happen.
[ Duncan ]
Yeah, absolutely. Great stuff. Well, I look forward to seeing how you guys progress. Good luck with the launch of Bettr!
[ Anj ]
Awesome. Thanks, Duncan.
[ Tobie ]
Thanks, Duncan. Thanks for your time.
Doing it Bettr
If we change nothing, nothing changes. So if you enjoyed this, please share it 💜
At Bettr, we’re building a community of people who back themselves to own their worth with the financial tools and opportunities to expand their knowledge, mindset and creator game. Help us grow the Bettr movement to ensure that financial exclusion is a thing of the past – for good.
If you haven’t yet, sign up to get early access to the Bettr app.
Got a media question or an idea to share? Let’s talk!👇
- Dinika Govender – CMO – dinika@bettr.app
Gugu Sithole-Tyali – Head of PR and Communications –gugu@bettr.app
#OwnYourWorth
