Innovation

Show me the money

Three South Africans have developed an inventive little payments app.

12 March 2018

In September 2017, Terence Goldberg, Irshad Kathrada and Dr Alon Stern released Slide, an app that allows users to send money to any email or number for free. Slide was inspired by Venmo, a hugely successful payment platform in the US, and South Africa’s challenges around accessibility, banking costs and payment options. Designed to look similar to social tools like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, Slide even allows users to personalise with emojis. Perhaps the size of the amount determines the type of emoji…

“Nearly 12 million South Africans send money to each other on a regular basis and yet the process of doing so remains challenging,” says co-founder Irshad Kathrada. “Existing channels such as traditional bank transfers, supermarket money transfers or cash are inconvenient, unsafe and costly. To overcome these, we created Slide, which lets people send money for free using their mobile phones.”

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