Kazang, the prepaid value-added services (VAS) and card acquiring business within JSE-listed fintech Lesaka Technologies, has been named as the ‘Most Disruptive Fintech Shaping Financial Inclusion Vision’ in the cash category at the Absa Commercial Payments Summit 2025.
The award recognises fintech companies that are revolutionising access to financial services for unbanked and underbanked populations. The goal is to identify fintechs with solutions that help to expand financial inclusion for populations in remote and underserved areas.
The award acknowledges the immense market impact of Kazang’s products and solutions in reducing the costs and risks of cash for informal merchants. One of the key reasons Absa’s judges chose Kazang is based on how its solutions remove cash from the informal ecosystem to improve safety and efficiency for suppliers, traders and customers.
The platform includes a Kazang Superwallet linked to the Kazang card terminal and cash vault solution, so retailers can make cashless payments directly to hundreds of major FMCG suppliers. Suppliers get access to cash-free, cost-effective payment rails into informal markets. This is helping to bring down the costs and risks of cash for the entire informal ecosystem.
This solution complements Kazang’s VAS offering, which enables merchants to use the same terminal to accept card payments, process cashbacks, accept bill payments and sell services such as prepaid electricity, prepaid airtime and data, bill payments and gaming. As such, Kazang merchants can manage cash and card payments, and pay suppliers from one platform.
Jonathan Thomson, Executive Head: Commercial – Kazang, says: “With around R72 billion in throughput across more than 90,000 merchants, Kazang is building a holistic ecosystem tailored to the needs of township merchants. It’s our goal to make it easy, affordable and rewarding for merchants to transact with and add value for their customers.
“Helping them to digitalise and derisk cash payments is one of the most important ways we can enable them to drive down costs and improve efficiencies. We see an enormous opportunity to leverage our technology to help informal and micro businesses reduce their exposure to cash while capitalising on opportunities to grow.”
This is the second year running Kazang has clinched a fintech award from Absa. Last year, the Kazang Pay card acceptance solution won the award for ‘Most Disruptive Fintech in the Informal Economy’. This award recognises Kazang Pay’s potential to displace cash payments and give informal vendors an affordable alternative to expensive card terminals.