Use the Force {{ FIRSTNAME | there }}? You know the Flock camera controversy in the US? Well, you gotta see what Darth Vader has to say about that level of public surveillance. "Stalk my ex-GF" LOL. 😈

In Today’s Open Letter

SA companies are paying exorbitant transaction fees on the ~R113.9 billion international tourists spend in SA every year — helping them earn more is what TurnStay was built to do…

Bet you didn't know that when a retired Dutch couple books a trip including a stay at a game lodge in South Africa and a hotel in Lisbon, both costing the same amount, the SA lodge gets less money out than the Lisbon hotel.

Why? In Europe, consumer card fees are capped at around 0.2 to 0.3%. But SA doesn't have that protection, so:

With 90% of tourists’ transactions coming through foreign cards, it's bad enough. But that's only the part we know of: One local founder's data shows European cards are 3 times as likely to decline when they're trying to book a stay in SA, so for all we know, millions more tourists are trying to book but never getting the chance.

That's why he built a solution…

This local scale-up decided that toll was optional

TurnStay is a borderless payments platform built to help African travel businesses transact better by processing every payment in the country the card comes from (US, UK, Europe, South Africa and Namibia; TurnStay has its own local entities everywhere).

In short, they give the currency margin banks used to pocket back to the merchant, cutting booking fees by up to 70%. But according to co-founders Alon Stern and James Hedley, the fees are just the tip of the iceberg.

The bigger opportunity one layer down

Individual safari bookings rarely settle as one payment, spawning 10 separate money movements (multiple lodges, helicopter, flights), often in various countries, so your SA operator runs into exchange control and the Reserve Bank's paperwork pretty fast.

So they hold the booking in escrow and pay each underlying supplier directly. That way, every lodge that gets paid lands with a wallet and a reason to become a paying merchant itself. Pay enough suppliers, and you no longer just have customers; you have the default place an entire industry moves its money.

We love their approach: Niche and specific industry focus (tourism), use a real pain to get a foot in the door (more than halve the fees on bookings), and then use that to build the layer an entire continent's travel money can move through.

We're watching this space…

Want to get good at Claude, for free? Anthropic launched Claude Academy, structured courses on getting the most out of Claude, open to anyone, no cost attached. Worth checking out.

Did Apple build a local AI dev box? The new M6 and M5 Ultra desktops come with a serious jump in on-device AI compute, which reads a lot like a machine built for running models locally instead of renting them by the token. Check it out.

Why do most AI pilots never reach production? Praelexis argues the order of operations is the whole game: map the work before buying the tool, build the platform once, then connect it to what your business already knows. Read it here.

Founders like Herman are building brilliant stuff all across SA. The Founder Collab is where they find each other. Come check it out.

📱 300 Million SIMs, 65 Million People. MTN says the industry pushes 200 to 300 million SIMs into SA every year and admits RICA registration quality can't hold up at that churn, drawing a straight line from weak KYC to the syndicates hijacking WhatsApp accounts.

🔐 Bye Six-Digit PIN. WhatsApp two-step verification now takes a full eight-character password, and accounts can hold multiple passkeys across devices. For most SA businesses, the WhatsApp number is the customer relationship. Review passkeys on any handset that touches a business account.

⚡ Getting The Power. MTN is targeting 150MW of AI data centre capacity across SA and Nigeria with a UAE-backed partner it still won't name, while holding only a minority stake. They’re still securing the land and the necessary power arrangements.

🌙 Insta Kid Curfews. Meta lost a court case and will pay up to R270bn and must put curfews for minors on Facebook and Instagram. The interesting part is Meta gets a discount if YouTube and TikTok don’t also put curfews in place. Who signs off on these deals?

🏆 Engagement That Converts. Studio 88 used WhatsApp competitions to turn attention into action. Chat Inc drove 83% read rates, 23% button clicks and converted nearly 6% of clickers into competition entries. Want that kind of engagement?*

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

We recently showed you what the design partner approach is and why an SA founder turned away paying customers to find hers. But the concept only works if you're ruthless about who you let in.

Here are 5 specific checks to ensure you choose the right design partner.

Yesterday, we showed you Cell C's MVNO strategy and how banks and retailers are quietly becoming networks, asking how you picked yours. Most here say inertia, pure and undefeated…

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🧠 Careful research on coverage and pricing (36%)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎁 It came free with something else (21%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤷 Inertia. Pure, undefeated inertia (43%)

Your 2 cents…

And that's the MVNO thesis in six words, L. 📶🏦

SA credit applications have more than tripled since 2008, and two-thirds of them now get rejected.

💡 Applications quadrupled from 6 million a quarter in 2008 to 20.4 million in 2026.

💡 Approvals grew far slower, up about 50% from 3.6 million to 5.3 million a quarter.

💡 Credit providers jumped from 6'215 in 2022 to more than 10'200 this year, with no matching growth in debt counsellors.

Meanwhile, 35% of SA's 56 million open loans are in arrears, and credit-active consumers spend 28% of take-home pay servicing debt.

More lenders than ever are handing out credit, a third of borrowers are already behind, and the number of professionals helping them dig out hasn't moved. If you sell to consumers, that 28% figure is the real competitor for your price point.

Indie Hackers #52, 27 Aug, Cape Town: Lean coffee format, no keynotes, the room builds the agenda and you talk about what's actually breaking. Free, tonight. Register free.

Digital Divas Summit 2026, 28 Aug, Cape Town: A full day on career growth, AI, ambition and visibility, built around the theme SHIFT. From R999, last chance. Get tickets.

Startup Stories: Bionuclex Research, 2 Sept, Cape Town: The team chasing multi-cancer early detection from a single blood draw, over lunch at OneBio. From R50. Join here.

Powered by Radi. Want your business event in front of 36,000 The Open Letter readers? Host it on Radi, and it lands here.

🧩 Tool to Try: FeelMeTV helps you find TV shows based on how you want to feel after/while watching it.

🎸 That's Interesting: We lost a legend this week, so to honour Dolly Parton: DYK when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame wanted to induct her, Parton felt like an imposter because she didn't see her music as rock, so she went and recorded her first and only rock album.