Ukheshe, Africa’s Fintech Enabler, together with Coinvest, has launched a payment solution to support the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and its partners that are working towards securing a better, more economically secure future for students in South Africa.
According to an article posted on the company’s website, the payment solution leverages Ukheshe’s powerful Eclipse API to provide a ready-to-use payment technology services framework.
While Coinvest Pay is a leading technology company that offers a mobile money management platform which helps individuals access virtual, personal and business accounts, they also help businesses to get paid fast through POS, e-Commerce, Card, EFT or QR Code.
The journey started in June 2022, the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) had allocated funding to over 690,000 students from disadvantaged background. With this large number, the NSFAS required a fast, secure, and reliable solution.
This made Ukheshe came up with a payment system – a full-scope mobile money management platform, using several Eclipse services including digital wallets, identity management (usernames and passwords), KYC, physical cards, virtual cards, and VAS delivered through a Progressive Web App (PWA).
The mobile management platform created by UKheshe and Coinvest will be the payment provider for beneficiaries. The solution provided by the partners will give access to students who otherwise wouldn’t have had access to the scheme.
After Coinvest was awarded the tender by the NSFAS, Ukheshe built a unique PWA channel allowing students to receive their monthly disbursements on an NSFAS card.
“This solution will alleviate challenges experienced through the current allowance payment method, as well as appropriately cater for the ever-increasing number of beneficiaries and large amounts of funds to be disbursed. Given the large socio-economic disparities that exist in South Africa, this project underscores the power that pioneering payment solutions can have in democratising access to financial services for people who need them most,” explains Anton Coertzen, Ukheshe CCO.
Dr Artie MaCkelve, group CEO of Coinvest, adds that Ukheshe was the clear choice for this project.
“We are fortunate to be able to utilise the same Ukheshe technology across all our business units, giving us quite a competitive edge when it comes to revenue collections, payments and transactions, and value-added services. Some of our national projects that already use Ukheshe solutions include several SETAs, the St. Johns Apostolic Faith Mission Church, the taxi Industry, Coinvest Mobile (MVNO/MVNE with MTN) and Coinvest TV (C-Mobile and C-TV), First for Students, and many more.”
Following this Ukheshe’s achievement is the company’s appointment of a new Chief Operating Officer (COO), Lee Ziervogel.
Ziervogel is a hands-on business leader with excellent people skills, who believes true business success requires solid, customer-centric ethics.
She has worked in multiple industries including financial services, technology and mobile, as well as the public sector and professional services where she led business transformation, and strategy execution, together with solution design and implementation.
In a statement, the new COO said, “I’m most looking forward to having the broad focus that will allow me to unlock value and drive rapid growth. And I am excited to work alongside the Ukheshe founders to drive a dream of enabling embedded finance through a world-class fintech platform.”
