Why We Built TappiPay
The reality of startups are messy and interesting, but their stories are often told in a way that's too clean, a pivotal moment, a garage or a founder who saw a future.
When starting TappiPay, we embraced the disorganisation and brainstorming phases and we that's what we want to explain to you.
It Wasn't a Lightbulb Moment.
Niall and Sean, the TappiPay co-founders, were sitting with a friend who runs a restaurant in Cape Town. Good location, loyal customers, years of graft behind them. The kind of restaurant that works because the owner works.
The chat turned towards discussing the business monthly statements and that's when they noticed the fees line. It wasn't necessarily the biggest number, well at least not the kind that triggers a panic. More like a significant slice silently leaving the business every month, money going to card network fees, acquiring bank margin and POS machine rentals.
The restaurant owner knew it was there, he'd just never done the full calculation. So the TappiPay co-founders did it with him.
At the restaurants card volume, they were paying between R8,000 and R12,000 a year. That's money being paid just to receive money for sales they'd already made. It's not something optional to businesses, but rather forms part of getting paid.
How The Fee Structure Is Designed
South African card transaction fees typically run between 1.5% and 3% per swipe. It's not a secret, but it's a cost that is structured in such a way that makes it difficult to see as a single total.
It doesn't arrive as one big annual invoice, but disappears across thousands of small transaction lines, each one too small to object to, collectively adding up to a number that most merchants have never consciously agreed to pay.
When a merchant takes in R200,000 a month in card sales and pays the average transaction fee of 2.75%, it works out to R5,500 a month in fees. Over a year, that's R66,000 going from the business before a single supplier, employee, or piece of stock sees it.
In large retail chains, someone usually manages the budget chain, however in small businesses the structure is a little different. For small business owners, they're the cashier, the buyer, the stock controller, and the person who locks up. It makes sense that these fees are often not noticed.
The Settlement Problem
The fees were one thing. The timing was another.
In South Africa, card settlements take one to three business days. A merchant's busy Saturday may only clear on Tuesday. Meanwhile, suppliers want paying on Monday and the shelves need restocking for the week. The cash flow gap is real, but merchants have no other option than to fill it personally.
Cash flow problems are one of the biggest threats to SME survival in this country, with over 90% of South African small businesses experiencing payment delays. The problem with settlement delay has not been adequately addressed in South Africa.
What We Built
TappiPay was founded to reduce card transaction fees, keep of the merchnats income in their pockets and alleviate settlement delay. TappiPay is built on PayShap — South Africa's real-time payment rail, operated by PayInc and backed by the South African Reserve Bank. PayShap has already processed over R403 billion across 461 million transactions since launch.
When a customer pays through TappiPay, the merchant's balance updates in seconds. Not the next morning. Not after the weekend. Seconds. At 11pm on a Sunday. On any public holiday. The settlement clock doesn't stop because the banking system does.
The transaction fee is significantly lower than card and merchants don't have to rent a POS machine, nor are faced with a minimum swipe fee. TappiPay quite literally changes the payment game for merchants.
Who We're Building For
We're not building for retailers who have payment teams and negotiated rates. We're building for the merchant who hasn't done the full maths yet. The one whose Saturday money is sitting in clearing while they need to restock on Monday. The one who got handed a card machine, signed a contract, and was told this is just how payments work.
It doesn't have to work this way. That's the whole idea.
TappiPay pre-sign-up is open ahead of our 2026 launch.
Reach out directly: julia@tappipay.co.za or niall@tappipay.co.za
TappiPay is a South African QR payments platform powered by PayShap. Built for merchants who want simpler, faster, fairer payments.
