Elijah Djan and Danei Rall are both industrial engineers who met in their final year of university over a shared frustration: Having grown up in homes where financial literacy was never discussed. When a campus competition challenged students to solve a problem that COVID made worse, they chose money.

Their first attempt wasn't a game. They ran a financial wellness programme for blue-collar employees at an automotive manufacturer. And 60-year-olds were budgeting for the first time. One man told Elijah it was too late for him, but he'd pass the booklet to his kids. That moment shifted the focus to the next generation.

What followed was a marathon brainstorming session that produced 35 ideas, from programming Neuralink with positive money habits to a money-themed theme park. One of the 35 was a board game. When a mentor invited them to a school market day, they built the first version in three days: an abacus for tokens, paper cards, and a pizza box for the game box. They made ten copies and sold four on the spot.

They kept trying to build an app instead. But everywhere they went, people pointed at the game and asked to buy it. At the biggest financial education conference in the world, in the Netherlands, a delegate was so determined to get a copy that she paid in cryptocurrency because neither founder had a card machine.

Thirty-seven iterations later, FinMaster is a light strategy board game for ages 13 and up where players build diversified portfolios, navigate market events, and try to grow their net worth. It has a loadshedding card that skips your rival's turn. It has a 4.4 out of 5 fun rating from players. And it now has shelf space in every Exclusive Books store in the country.

The financial literacy numbers in South Africa are grim. The country ranks poorly on most global financial literacy indices, and household debt remains high relative to income. Board games like Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow and BeFree have tried to address this space internationally, but they're imports built for other markets. FinMaster is built by South Africans, for South African conditions, with local references baked into the gameplay.

The more interesting signal is what's happening off the board. Parents report kids asking questions about money after playing and staying up to research financial terms (which would later lead to their newsletter Mini Millionaires). Young adults have reportedly opened Tax-Free Savings Accounts and adjusted their Easy Equities portfolios after encountering these concepts in the game. That's behaviour change, not just entertainment.

Fintr is backed by E-Squared (the same fund connected to Allan Gray that featured in our HAVAIC Fund 3 coverage), is an alumnus of the Injini EdTech Accelerator, and was named a HolonIQ Africa Top 50 EdTech for 2025. Elijah is an Allan Gray Fellow. The company has also received grants from the World Bank and Standard Chartered Bank. For a board game startup, the institutional backing is unusually strong.

Getting into Exclusive Books is a milestone, but it's one retail channel in one country. FinMaster is also available on Takealot and through specialist board game retailers, including Fanaticus, Pwned Games, Level Up Store, and The Toy Store in Cape Town, plus delivery via Zulzi.

The real test is whether Fintr can build distribution beyond South Africa. The game was showcased at Spiel Essen, the world's largest board game convention (200,000+ visitors), where one attendee reportedly waited 40 minutes for a point-of-sale system to reboot rather than leave without a copy. That's promising anecdotal demand, but converting conventional interest into international retail is a different challenge entirely.

Fintr also has a schools play through its Fintr4Schools programme, targeting the Grade 7 EMS curriculum. If the school channel scales, it could become more significant than retail. But as Elijah has noted publicly, one of the biggest challenges in financial education is that the return on investment doesn't reveal itself for years. Everyone agrees it matters, but it keeps getting pushed down the priority list.

For now, FinMaster is a South African product with a good story, real traction, and a shelf at Exclusive Books. Whether it becomes a global brand or remains a local success will depend on what Fintr builds next.

This news first appeared in our 9 Mar ‘26 newsletter on Halo Dot mobile payments.

See how institutional money is entering SA venture capital in HAVAIC Fund 3. Read our take on SA founders building globally in Plato Coffee. And explore our original feature on SA founders at Y Combinator.