The Challenge
Spaza shops play an important role in South African communities, providing convenient access to food, household goods and essential services.
However, many spaza shops still rely heavily on cash. Existing digital payment options may involve high transaction costs, expensive hardware, complex onboarding, delayed settlements or systems that do not work easily across different payment providers.
This can make it difficult for small businesses to adopt digital payments while maintaining control over their costs and cash flow.
The hackathon question
How might we use open and interoperable payment technology to make digital payments more accessible, affordable and practical for spaza shops?
What solutions might explore
- Low-cost digital payment acceptance
- Payments without expensive point-of-sale hardware
- Interoperability between different wallets or payment providers
- Faster or more transparent settlement
- Offline or low-connectivity payment experiences
- Simple onboarding for shop owners
- Better transaction records and payment visibility
- Customer loyalty or community-based payment features
Teams do not need to solve every issue. Choose a specific part of the problem and address it well.