Social media much {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? Cops in South Korea were so proud that they caught tax evaders using crypto to hide $4.8 million, they posted pics of the raid online. Only problem is the account-recovery info was clearly visible in the pics, so someone else just logged in and stole all of it. 💵🔥

In This Open Letter

Why can shops only accept payments at the till? This SA tech turns every staff member’s phone into a POS…

First developed in 1979, the point-of-sale landed on local shores sometime in the 1980s. It was tech built for a simpler, cash-driven time. But things changed in the 90s and 2000s as card payments took off.

Suddenly, businesses needed new hardware – usually a rented terminal with fees to a bank or provider. Another 20-something years on, and now SA (like many global markets) has seen a rapid shift toward contactless and digital payment methods, accounting for 50% of all digital transactions.

But we were still stuck with long queues at the till point. Have you ever asked yourself why contactless payments are still tied to that expensive card machine at the till counter? 

Local player helping SA drop the card machine

Halo Dot is a payments technology provider that lets businesses accept card payments using only their smartphone software. Built on the back of the gold standard PCI-MPOC (Payment Card Industry Mobile Payments) protocol for secure tap-to-pay transactions, it turns your phone into an instant card machine.

But instead of building their own consumer-facing app, they provide a Software Developer Kit that allows banks, telcos and the like to embed payment acceptance directly into their own applications.

From side-hustles to queue-busting

And while you’d be forgiven for thinking that tap-to-phone tech is more of a tool for the weekend market stall, Halo Dot is already building in the enterprise space.

The play is quite clever: Halo Dot enables your existing rugged inventory to not only scan items but also accept payments anywhere in the store. I.e. no more need for till points. Or at least, no need for queues – the team can just ring you up right there in the queue (so long, Black Friday woes!).

Security-wise, they’re even piloting a “Tap on Own Device” solution for authenticating high-value deposits more securely than CVV, and their tech is already used in SA banks, telcos, retailers and others.

Halo Dot’s architecture is designed to be payment agnostic. And being purely software, it could facilitate tap-to-pay for almost any rail (PayShap, stablecoins, crypto), making phone-to-phone settlement for alternative currencies a near-term reality.

Turning anyone into a potential mobile POS?

Yes, we’re watching this space…

And it could cut your deal time in half…

In the US and UK, venture capital deals close faster because the industry agreed on standardised legal documents decades ago. South Africa never had that — until now.

The SA Venture Capital Model Documents give founders, investors and lawyers a single, market-standard legal framework built specifically for South African law.

No more reinventing the wheel every round, six-figure legal bills, negotiating boilerplate or copying American templates that don't hold up locally.

Developed by the country's leading VC attorneys at Dommisse Attorneys, backed by SAVCA and the SA SME Fund and shaped by input from top funds, founders and law firms across the ecosystem, these documents are designed to do one thing: Let founders build and investors deploy, with clarity and speed.

🧩 From Pizza Box to The Bookshelf: SA-made money education board game FinMaster is launching at Exclusive Books nationwide. From a pizza box prototype to Takealot, The Toy Store and now SA’s leading bookstore, see how Fintr is building the FinMaster board game in SA.

👂 Loud and Clear. The HearX Foundation and The University of Pretoria (UP) have launched an AI-powered hearing health training tool, with the fully automated service delivered through WhatsApp, meaning no app downloads, special equipment or prior tech knowledge. Mega.

🤖 Meta Opens the Chatbot Doors. Meta will allow rival AI chatbots on WhatsApp for a year as it faces pressure from a possible temporary order from EU antitrust regulators. Meta will support general-purpose AI chatbots using the WhatsApp Business API in Europe. Interesting.

🃏 Game On. A new browser-based game, Wikipedia Gacha, turns random Wikipedia entries into a collectable trading card game. Visit the website and start opening packs of five Wikipedia article cards with scores and rarity based on the entry’s WikiRank. Ha hah — awesome.

⏱️ Payroll 8× Faster. Cape Union Mart’s payroll team was stuck fixing errors and fighting downtime. So Deel Local Payroll, powered by PaySpace, replaced the old system with a cloud platform that cut payroll processing from 4 days to just half a day, eliminating downtime and freeing the team to focus on real operational improvements.*

* From our partners. Find all the best service providers for your business in our Founder Stack.

The world's largest crypto exchange processed $34 trillion, more than the United States' annual GDP of $30.6 trillion.

It’s even more than the New York Stock Exchange's estimated $20 trillion.

In fact, since starting in 2017, around $145 trillion has been traded via it, the equivalent of the annual economic output of the entire planet.

And they recently detailed what sits behind those figures: institutional-grade custody, tokenised collateral from firms like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, regulatory licenses across 20 jurisdictions, and fiat payment rails spanning 100+ currencies and 800+ payment methods.

It’s the story of crypto being made into infrastructure. And if you want to see what it’s all about, read the full story here.

Disclaimer: Digital asset prices can be volatile. The value of your investment may go down or up and you may not get back the amount invested. You are solely responsible for your investment decisions and Binance is not liable for any losses you may incur. Not financial advice. For more information, see our Terms of Use and Risk Warning.

Yesterday, we showed you the We Need Milk grocery aggregator, asking how you shop for groceries. Most still pop into the closest store on the way home…

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛵 One app, one delivery, once a week (24%)

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧑‍💻 Locked in to 12 different stores and a spreadsheet (16%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🧚 I don't, it just magically appears in the cupboard (12%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧺 I pop into the closest store on the way home (40%)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤔 I have a secret way (tell us)... (8%)

Your 2 cents…

Fresh finds and fresh air: the market never misses, Mmonise! 🌿🛒

How AI Is Shaping Fintech Across Africa – 16 Apr, Johannesburg: Shola Akinlade joins a high-signal Open Letter event exploring scaling fintech and the role of AI across African markets. Get your tickets.

Lekker Network Summit – 11–12 Mar, Somerset West: Two days of talks, connection and community with The Lekker Network’s global members at Lourensford. View details.

How To Hire Developers In The Age Of AI – 13 Mar, Online: OfferZen leaders unpack how AI is changing hiring, what to look for in dev talent, and how teams should scale smarter. Join via Founder Collab.

Founder-Led Sales – 27 Mar, Online: Heinrich Swanepoel shares how to qualify, handle objections and close deals confidently without feeling pushy. Live roleplay included. More information here.

More? See the best and most exciting SA startup and tech events.

🧾 Tool to Try: FluidForms turns forms into conversations: validating answers, reading uploaded files and asking follow-up questions in real time.

🤖 That’s Interesting: HitchBOT was a hitchhiking robot built to test human kindness. It successfully travelled across Canada and parts of Europe, but was found destroyed in the US in 2015.

🏃 Next Level: Watch the parkour speedrun world champions in action.

🧠 Hack: A cool guide to divergent and convergent thinking — and how combining them creates lateral thinking.

🌍 Wow Site: Born In… shows you what the world was really like when you were born.