SURESWIPE
Quality Service Delivery Sets Sureswipe Apart PRODUCTION: David Napier
Helping independent retailers and other clients to accept payments for their goods and services but doing so with a touch of quality and excellent service delivery has resulted in Sureswipe becoming known as the industry leader in South Africa’s payment service industry. MD Paul Kent talks to Enterprise Africa about the company’s ongoing success and his plans for the future.
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The way people pay for the products and services they consume is in a constant state of shift. Before we get settled with whatever the latest trend is, payment systems will likely change again – it’s just the nature of technology, forever adapting. Today, the two most prominent payment methods globally are cash and card. Bartering is almost gone, cheques have become extinct, coins are bulky and inconvenient, and paper cash is unsafe and inconvenient to carry. This, along with the rise of online shopping, has fuelled the growth of card payments and digital money transfer. So, what happens when customers want to use their cards? Banks are issuing are issuing new cards all the time, but retailers are finding it
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difficult and expensive to accept plastic? Whether it’s contactless or chip and pin, South Africa’s Sureswipe has the answer. Founded in 2008 in Johannesburg, Sureswipe has grown steadily over the past 11 years and is now the industry leader in a highly competitive market. The company offers traditional standalone card machine; Integrated payments for larger retail franchise stores looking for faster transactions to reduce queues; mobile MOVE card machines for businesses on the go with a POS LITE APP based point of sale software for start-ups and smaller retailers; Gift and Loyalty card programmes for business owners looking to retain, attract customers and grow their business, and much more.
Managing Director, Paul Kent tells Enterprise Africa about the idea behind Sureswipe. “We have around 55 million people in the country and there’s over 70 million bank cards in circulation,” he says. “We have good distribution on the issuance of cards but what we don’t have is good distribution of card acceptance points. We want to make card acceptance easy and accessible to retailers across the country. That means we have to bring options to merchants and retailers of all size. Even to get a traditional standalone or portable card machine, it is still quite expensive for a smaller retailer. We have introduced a mobile card machine solution to the market which, from a monthly fixed cost perspective,
