From cash in hand to a settled rand, in real time.
How a wallet is loaded, how a payment clears, where the money sits, and what it takes to go live. Written for a finance director, not a developer.
Loading a wallet
A wallet is funded from a bank account, at an ATM, at an agent or cash point, or over the counter at a participating merchant. The funding rails are the banking system's. Money comes out the same ways: as cash at an agent, spent at any merchant on the rail, or transferred to a bank account. Nobody is locked in.
Paying
The customer approves each payment with a PIN on their own phone. The merchant's wallet is credited at once, with a success or insufficient-funds message back. There is no batch, no netting inside the platform and no chargeback: each payment clears from money to money, and a payment that is not funded does not happen. A settled payment is final, the way a banknote handed over is final.
Three applications
A consumer app and a merchant app, on Android, iOS and Huawei, and an enterprise application on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure that a retailer's own systems call through an application programming interface (API). The enterprise layer carries terminal management, per-cashier and per-shift tracking, and a QR code per till or per pump. We do not touch point-of-sale devices.
Custody and settlement
Wallet balances sit in a ring-fenced pool account at a sponsoring bank. The bank settles into the National Payment System at each settlement window. The ledger, reconciliations and settlement reports are automated and available in real time.
Security
A PIN at every transaction, not only at login. Dual-factor authentication, role-based authorisation, public-key encryption, development to OWASP guidelines, ISO 20022 messaging, and full audit logging. A formal security pack is available to a bank's or an enterprise's information-security team on request.
Implementation
Four to six months from start to live, of which the technical implementation is ten to twelve weeks. Deployment is remote: nothing is installed in stores and trading is not interrupted.
Ready to see it against your own numbers?
Talk to Johan Burger, Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer.
johanb@sommaredde.com