A little breezy? You know you’re having a better day than this Argentinian man, when Google Street View captured a pic of his naked backside and put it on Maps (along with his address, of course 🤣). A judge ordered Google to pay $12’500, and the guy, presumably, put on some pants.

In This Open Letter:

Also, see how 3 South African built a massive R30bn company in the BVNK Mastercard acquisition story.

Two local companies are brewing up the tastiest loyalty programmes we’ve seen in ages – and others will follow suit…

SA loves loyalty programmes. The average South African belongs to eight of them. No wonder Discovery Vitality alone reports over R36 million monthly Discovery Miles spend.

The appeal is clear: combine rich behavioural data, partner perks, and real-world value, and you’ve got a loyalty flywheel that feels like free money. But while some local players are pushing the envelope, many retail programmes are still stuck in the plastic era.

Until recently, you could offload your cards onto an app like Stocard. But Klarna shut it down, leaving South African users stranded. And, as wallets shrink (95% of South Africans used some form of emerging payment method back in 2022), so too does patience for clunky loyalty.

What if loyalty just… happened?

Tap. Pay. Earn. Done.

That’s the future Yoyo is building and Platō is pioneering.

Platō, the fast-growing coffee franchise, has just launched a tap-to-earn experience that links your card directly to rewards. No QR codes. No apps. Just magic. After your first payment at a Yoco terminal, a small screen prompts your mobile number. That’s it. Your card is now loyalty-enabled, and from then on, every tap earns you 5% back… automatically.

The tech behind it is quietly revolutionary. Yoyo originally developed the system after spotting a major shift in London: People were ditching QR apps in favour of tap-to-pay. Realising this trend posed a serious threat to traditional loyalty models, they re-engineered the stack to work at the acquirer level, skipping costly Visa/Mastercard tokenisation and instead building a lower-cost, scalable solution.

It’s working now because there’s no need to download an app upfront, no pre-loaded cards to carry, no extra steps after the first tap, and zero franchisee settlement complexity: earnings are treated as liabilities, not transactions.

And four parties win:

And crucially, it’s cashflow positive. Because redemption always lags collection, retailers come out ahead.

With more terminal integrations underway and wallet-based SME solutions coming soon, Yoyo is eyeing larger coalition programmes too. Think “earn loyalty at your local café, redeem at your pharmacy”.

Seems like cardless loyalty is finally here, and we’re so ready for it.

Get found in the AI. ChatGPT now handles 2.5 billion requests a day, fast approaching Google’s 14 billion. As users turn to ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini for answers, visibility in AI search is becoming just as critical as SEO. Is your brand showing up? Here’s how to get it to.

Need to get insights or learn new industries fast? Try this simple AI prompt trick: ask ChatGPT, “Give me the 80/20 of [topic].” It distils the 20% of steps that drive 80% of the results, cutting the fluff and making learning actionable. Founders are using this for everything from product strategy to pitching. Read how it works.

Need AI startup ideas you can steal? Guillermo Rauch, CEO of $3 billion AI cloud company Vercel, just shared 6/7 fresh AI startup concepts in a video. These are ready-to-execute opportunities for founders looking to ride the AI wave. Grab them here.

Why should only big brands have real WhatsApp tech?

Most new and small businesses don’t have time to sit through demos or figure out clunky enterprise software. You’ve got products to ship, customers to talk to, and zero patience for red tape.

But what if you could just… start?

That’s why flEX by Chat Inc is such a game-changer — the first pure SaaS WhatsApp marketing platform in South Africa. No subscriptions. No platform fees. No gatekeeping.

You sign up. You connect your WhatsApp channel. You buy credits. You start sending.

Whether you’re a boutique store, local brand, or solo founder, flEX gives you the same broadcast and automation tools the big brands use — without needing a whole IT team to run it.

🛍️ Size Up. Uniq, the standalone apparel brand by Checkers, has just opened its 32nd store in Cape Town's Northern Suburbs. Just imagine when they start slinging these on Sixty60…

🦡 Peachy looking Badger. Peach Payments now lets South Africans trade in Bitcoin and other cryptos, thanks to a savvy team-up with MoneyBadger. Lekka.

🎬 Oz Goes Mega! AI is taking "The Wizard of Oz" to new, expansive heights inside the 160,000 sq ft screen at the Sphere in Vegas. Wonder if they'll do a screening of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon"?

🚗 Securing The Bag. Ticketless parking player, admyt, just acquired in-mall engagement platform SHôPING from Attacq (Mall of Africa’s owner), leveling up to a seamless retail journey called mallpass. Congrats Kfir & the admyt team.

✅ The Stack. Founders need trusted tools and suppliers: Check out our Founder’s Stack with real-time AI insights and decision automation from Sidekicklab, zero-monthly-fee bank accounts and business loans in 4 minutes from Lula, plus loads more vital startup tools & services.

Yesterday, we told you about an awesome new SME back office solution, asking about your biggest small business admin pain. And we got our first-ever 3-way tie…

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧾 Losing receipts before month-end (32%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 📊 Staying tax compliant (32%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🧠 Not knowing where the money’s gone (32%)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 💸 Paying too much for accounting help (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌃 Generating invoices from my laptop at midnight (5%)

In case you missed it, we were talking about Huppi, which helps sort SME back-office and finances on WhatsApp.

On 28 July 1981, IBM launched the System/23 Datamaster, its very first desktop computer. It was a typewriter-sized tank, weighing 45 kilograms and costing (in today’s terms) around R530k.

Funny thing is, it was obsolete from day 1: It came with an Intel 8085 (an 8-bit processor), which was already outdated at the time, and had no onboard memory, just a floppy drive.

In fact, just 1 month later, IBM launched their IBM PC, with the new Intel 8088 (16-bit) processor, and that killed the System/23 Datamaster for good.

But it had been a groundbreaking test for IBM in the small business sector: The Datamaster was the first time IBM tested word processing and data management in a single, self-contained unit that didn’t require a specialist to set up — and it’s remembered among forerunners like Altair 8800 and the blockbuster Apple II in the personal computing boom of the 1980s.

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