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TCS | VezoPay on new South African-made payment ring

A new smart payment ring has been launched in South Africa – and it’s built by South Africans for South Africans. In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), TechCentral editor Duncan McLeod chats to VezoPay founders Jake Pinkus and Lawrence Baker about the launch of the ring – it’s available in three variants at launch – and what was behind the idea. In the interview, they not only explain why they decided to build a payment ring, but also why they’re entering what could soon become a highly competitive market globally, with both Samsung Electronics and Apple expected to launch their own smart rings later this year. Pinkus and Lawrence unpack: • How long they’ve been working on the payment ring, and where the idea came from; • How much research and development was involved, and who’s backing the innovation; • How the technology works, and what exactly is inside the ring; • The various options available at launch; • How it works without having to be charged; • How the security features work (without giving the game away); • How VezoPay is working with South African banks; • Whether the ring can be used for ticketing (concerts, Gautrain, etc); • How much it costs; • The potential competition from Samsung and Apple; and • VezoPay’s plans to expand beyond South Africa’s borders. Don’t miss the interview!

Duration:: 40m
Broadcast on:: 01 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: aac

I'm Duncan McLeod and this is the Tech Central Show. TCS is brought to you by MTN business, please visit them at MTNbusiness.co.ca and we thank them for their partnership with the show, which allows us rather to bring you these great interviews. And we have a great interview lined up next to South African startup called VisaPay, which has developed a smart ring solution that is promising, among other things, to revolutionize the way people think about payments. So just discuss VisaPay. I'm joined in the studio today by the founder and director, Jake Pinkis and director Lawrence Baker. Welcome to both of you and thank you for your time. Yeah, thanks for having us. Pleasure. Exciting to chat about this. You can look out for a detailed article on Tech Central about VisaPay by my colleague Tadek Sutowich, which we are publishing along with this podcast interview. So if you came for more details, do have a look at that article. Jake, let me start with you. How long have you guys been working on the VisaPay payment ring and where did the idea come from? Sure. Okay. So about two and a half years we've been working on this. As you can imagine working in the payment space, there's a lot of complexities and a lot of background things that you have to get done. The idea, it's quite an interesting story, how that idea came about. I used to travel quite a lot and a lot of the destinations that I was traveling to were a lot of water activities. Getting in and out of boats and moving between different locations and all the time at some point you need to make a payment and there was no convenient way to make any payment. So sitting there, you know, getting in and out of boats and you've got these dry bags and you put your cell phone in and you put your wallet inside and all your bank cards inside and every time you get off the boat, you need to take it out. I was like, there's got to be a better way and the one day I was at a breakfast bar that they have in the middle of the swimming pool at this hotel and I couldn't take my phone worth. I couldn't take my wallet, it was in my pocket and it was all the money was getting damaged and my money started floating out in the water there and I thought to myself there's got to be something better, you know, something that's way more convenient and that's kind of what sparked the idea initially and because I was involved in procurement and sourcing and developing products for other customers, I was like, I've got to put these skills to work and figure out a way to develop something that can solve this issue and that idea just it kept building and building and building and eventually I thought to myself, what is the smallest, the smallest, most convenient part of your body that you could wear something to pay, you know, that's your thing, like the smallest thing to really take it to the next level would be a ring, you know, a bracelet is like a watch so like to start off something really big I thought that's the next move. So I figured out how to kill the elements and do the technology side of it and prototype it and... A bit of a technologist by heart, at heart? Yes, but I would say I'm not the most technologically advanced human in terms of and that's actually why I brought Lawrence on board because the hardware side I was very strong on because that's what you do when you source components, but this is a lot of software in the background of this to make it work and that's when I approached Lawrence, actually I approached a few people before him and every single person I approached said to me, impossible, don't even bother, don't even bother, don't get involved in the payment space until I forget it's impossible, like only big companies can do it and you've got to be a bank or something, this is what everyone told me and I was like, because it's impossible, that's why you're going to do it. Yeah. Because no one's going to challenge you, surely, like if you solve that it's going to be big. So how did you guys meet Lawrence? Oh, how did we meet? So actually Jake's family basically, he's currently dating my sister, my younger sister. So we never met on the best terms, but we slowly came to see Aata, especially when it came to technology and business and that kind of thing. So when Jake did come to me with the idea he said, you understand software, I'm trying to do this and within about a minute I said, okay, cool, we start today, let's go. And about six months after that point we met our first payment in South Africa was literally just like that. Yeah. I got impossible, impossible, impossible. It's good. And I was like, but it's got to be possible, like the base round there is there, like you figured out the basics of it. And he was like, yes, that and he saw the vision straight away. It's amazing. Some people can see it. And some people don't see it. Yes. Yes. Most people don't see it. But Lawrence, you've got a technology background, right? You've got a couple of startups under your belt, really. Yeah. Well, well, not a couple, just one. Well, it's a sale. But yeah. I've been on the channel before. Yeah. The sellbirds company, you know, software based 31 countries now and growing strong. And he's self sustainable at this point because of our staff and how good they all are. And it gives me a bit of time to step away and do some other exciting things in different spaces. Yeah. Yeah. It's. Okay. And yeah, obviously when we started out visa, we started a little bit differently and with the different mindsets that, you know, this could be absolutely huge, but not just in terms of financials, but in terms of changing the way people act and interact and that was the key for me is how we could actually make something worth making. Yeah. And that's the key. Right. I actually want to cut away to a promotional video that you guys have put together just to demonstrate the technology and hard works, just to give our viewers an idea of the tech and sorry to the guys listening to the audio version of the podcast. But have a look at this video and he'll give you a good idea before we continue with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there we go. Interesting technology guys. Jay, how much R&D was involved in developing the string? In terms of, I mean, as you can understand, it's taken two and a half years. Most of that was R&D. So if you're talking about time, a hell of a lot of time, some of my resources, I mean, we have three investors who obviously helped us, kicked off the journey because it required lots of sampling and lots of rounds of, you know, making the first prototype work. And you're working with big companies because like the certain elements that go in there have to be certified. So it's not like you can just pick up a phone and phone them and say, I want to do this. You need to be able to get ahold of these high-level companies that won't talk to you because you're a starter. So yeah, I don't know if that answers you. So does the investor, I mean, you've got some big-name investors behind you. I'm not sure if you're able to disclose. Yeah, we can. One of them is the South African CEO of NUSPA. Yes. She's phenomenal. Phenomenal. She's the best. Not only on obviously being an investor, but also, you know, to advise us and help us. She's got a brilliant mind. She's been involved in a lot of big companies. I mean, NUSPA is one of the biggest companies in the world, not only in South Africa. And same thing. We told them our vision. We had a few meetings with them and it was very quick. They saw it so quickly and we're like, let's do this thing. So she invested, it's pretty, I'm sorry, I haven't written her name down, it's putty man Maha. She invested in her personal capacity or was it a nice passion? It's not capacity. Okay. Yeah, I'm not NUSPAs themselves. They don't look at anything and I think $20 million something like that, don't quote me. But that was the, you know, another here about us. Hang NUSPAs. Give us another six months. Right. All right. Okay. So you've got the financial backing. It's unusual for a South African startup to look at a consumer electronics product of you, have you run into challenges in developing a consumer electronics product from the tip of Africa? How difficult has it been? Well, no one generally takes South African seriously as the Silicon Valley top, top entrepreneurs. But actually, you know, half of the great ideas coming into Silicon Valley now are coming from outside of Silicon Valley. Yeah. And so Africa is definitely getting better known for their technology and their ideas. And they're hardworking people. So yes, it is difficult, especially dealing with the big international companies, you know, like they're all American based and they really, they really look down on anywhere outside of America and, and Dubai for some reason. Dubai is a hub now for a lot of this tech, but as, as South Africans, we have faced a lot of, you know, prejudice, I would say, and the Rand definitely doesn't help that week around, you know, when everything's in euros and dollars, it gets very expensive to, to, to build this kind of tech. But ultimately, I think it also helps us being South African because we know that nothing's going to be done for us. We have to fight for every inch. And that kind of mentality is why we get far when we, when we try to do something. We know how hot it's going to be. And we know we're not afraid of hard work. And I think that's a South African trait from beginning to end. They work hard. And that's, that's the key. And the technology is radio, right? You've built it, it's, it's ready for, it's in production, is it? It's, yes, it's ready to sell today. Later on, our consumer. We do have a few steps in terms of onboarding banks, but we do believe they will onboard. I was going to ask, would you work through the banks or would you work through companies like Master, Master, Master Card and Visa? So I think it's better to explain how the technology works to answer their question. Yeah, let's do that. And it also might answer some of the challenges that we had to overcome. So when, when we initially started on this journey, we, you know, when you're in the payments place, you think to yourself like, how do you, how do you generate revenue from this business? And initially we thought, well, sell the devices at a really, really cheap price and make money on the transactions. Any bank person is watching this, will offer this and say, everybody thinks like that's the way to go or have some wallet and make some money in the wallet. But in the end of the day, that's very complicated to get right because you need, you need sponsorship from banks or you need to be a bank. Yeah. And we had to figure out a way to provide this technology that's free for the bank to come on board because they need to be involved as well as free for the end user to continue using their bank credentials the way they've been using it. When they tap on the terminal, it's, it's the, it's the pet peeve of the payment world. Nobody should charge the user, charge the merchant, you know, charge the shop, don't charge the, the guy who's going to pay, he's the little guy. So we thought to us, how do we solve that? And that's how our technology actually works. Essentially, we're able to issue tokens, which is an encrypted version of someone's credentials. We assign that token to their bank credentials onto our device. And because it's tokenized, it's even more secure than carrying it on your bank card. What that means is that their credentials are not actually stored physically on the ring. A token is stored in the ring and issued on behalf of the credential. So even if you lose this, well someone tries to skim it, they can't actually receive your bank credentials. Whereas if I leave a bank card, you know, on the table, and someone wants to just even read my credentials on the bank card, they can read my card number, my CV and my personal details, can't do that on the ring. And then on top of that, if I want to skim the chip, I can put it into a device and I can read the data off the chip and get your actual banking credentials that you use to pay. If you try to do that, you just get a random string of encrypted numbers that mean nothing. So our technology is free for the bank to use. If we onboard a bank, their users can buy our technology and use their bank cards on our rings. We're not issuing any new cards, we're not making anything in the transaction, it's totally free for the user to use. It's somewhere in the likes of a Google Pay or Samsung Pay. It's something like that technology, but different because there's no battery inside here. There's no power inside the string. There's no battery in the ring. There's no battery in the ring. How does it work then? That's the magic. It's an NFC power chip. So when you tap your finger to the terminal, the terminal charges the ring just for that moment that it allows it to pass the important data that is required and then the rest goes online. So it doesn't require any battery inside here, which is obviously a major convenience point of what we believe the product's about. You never have to charge it, you never have to look at it, there's no screen time, it just works. So how does that energy transference actually work? I'm struggling to understand the concept. So electromagnetic waves. So the terminal itself generates electricity, it's got a battery, it generates electromagnetic waves around the NFC reader on the device. So as you come within that electromagnetic wave, that power source within 3 centimeters of the terminal, the electromagnetic waves travel through the ring and run through a special antenna and power this chip with those waves. So it's not a... Wow. Yeah, it's not... Very, very low power. So it really exists, technology like this in your bank card right now. So that tap that you do, it's the exact same concept, that's not a tokenized version. So this, obviously, and obviously not a wearable version. And that's the... A card's bigger. Yeah, much bigger. So the chip is bigger. So the chip in a card is much bigger and then there's actually an antenna inside the card. So it's got a bigger surface area to receive what Lawrence was talking about. It's part of one of those challenges you're asked about is how do you power such a small thing and how do you put a chip small enough in there that can receive the power and have all the software honest to do what it needs to do. The terminal powers the chip, the chip then gets asked by the terminal for a token. And then the chip's basically the main job of the chip is to say this is my token and the machine already, whether you use your card, your phone, whatever, the machine does the rest because the machine now goes into bank service and says who is this, who's this token belong to, which bank and so on and so forth. So yeah, it's pretty straightforward actually if you think of it that way. Fascinating. So from that point on it's acting like a bank. Once it goes offline then it does what a bank card does, which is that's where our interaction ends. And we should say that it is your bank card. So you have a bank card, you basically place that bank card's information into this chip, into this ring and this ring will act as your bank card. So there is no distinction between this ring and your bank card at that point. It just acts with all the security, with everything you've got your limits, your everything it is just your bank card in a more secure fashion on your body. Interesting. And security is a big question that we get often. Yeah, it is. The other interesting question I need to ask is obviously people are going to be putting these rings on and they're going to be doing things like going surfing and hiking and climbing mountains and all sorts of things. How susceptible is this to damage from water, for example? Completely. Completely. Completely. Unbelievable. Not susceptible, completely the opposite. Right. So even so we have various materials that we can work with, part of some of the other complexities which we can also talk about. So this original design here is ceramic, it's cyclonia ceramic. So you can drop this, it's completely sealed and it's sealed with special resin so there's no ways that any sort of liquid can get inside and I mean I've swam with this, we've put it to the paces, we've dropped it, we've thrown it. It's pretty rugged. It's very light as well and the technology again in that there's no batch or anything to really get damaged and there are other materials that we work with in terms of the hard part is metal blocks NFC or electromagnetic waves and we've actually got rings now that we've been making out of gold and silver, a titanium at a later stage, not right now. And that was also a challenge how to overcome that. How did you overcome that? Secret. That was a bit more proprietary. Okay. Yeah. I'll give away all your secrets. But yeah. So absolutely. So it is waterproof. It is drop-proof. It is hyper allergenic. Those are the, I mean I'd say the hygiene factors or wearable is that if you have to take it off when you swam or surf or whatever, then we've already lost our first battle. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Does it take us through the options and the versions you're going to have available? You've mentioned gold and silver and ceramic. What materials are you going to be on offer? You're going to have different colors. How many products are going to be available at launch? So at launch we're going to have three main variants of the ring. The Visa X ring, which is what Jake's wearing now. It also has three colors. Which? Yeah. I was, I was going to get there. What colors are those? So there's the black is the white and there's pink. Okay. Yeah. And we're going to have a matte and a gloss. Okay. So the interesting, I never thought about this, but we have heard from people that have tested our products. Some people are worried about the glossy, you know, because glossy products, you know, get fingerprints and you got to wipe it and keep it clean. I thought about that to me. I was like, oh, that's a good point. So we also have a matte version which kind of looks more frosted, I would say. Yeah. To explain it. Right. So that's the gloss version. The matte version is a matte version of that. It also comes in slim line, not as thick, five mole and seven. And then of course we've got our silver pieces, which is part of our classic range. It's at all come, they all come in slim. They are real silver and they are a little bit thinner than that ring there. And they are very, very pretty and probably my favorite of the ranges. And then we get our signature range, which is where you can really add some individuality to it. If you really want your own personal gold, payment ring, then that is where the signature range comes in. So you can have from plated to 18 carat gold. Wow. Then there will be options in the future to add stones, diamonds, rutobies, whatever you feel like adding to it as well. But at this point, just a straightforward gold, 18 carat gold ring if you would like to propose with rose. You can basically propose with it and give the way you're credit card at the same time. Very dangerous. That's really given way. That's really given way. You're not worth it. Much more than a diamond. As many as on your account, it's a diamond amount that leaves. I imagine that it's going to be a wide range of price points for the product. Are you able to disclose pricing at this point? We can say froms because each one is slightly different. As you change, there's a lot of add-ons to how you pick your ring. True. So they're really customisable. That's the key. It's all about the individuality and choosing one that suits you. You can, from about 2,500 rand, you can have a basic X ring, which has all the functionality of the top 18 carat gold one, but it's what suits you. Then you can have that in a slimmer version, add a little bit there because of the complexities of having that chip in an even smaller space now. And then obviously, you can have different colours. You can have the matte and gloss finish that all adjusts the price very slightly. And obviously on the gold, it's the same ranges from plated to 18 carat, like 18 carat of actual real gold, just about the gold has got a hard value. So basically, if you had a range of prices, it would be from, let's say, 2,500 rand to about 35,000 rand for the top gold 18 carat. And that's obviously there's a high end there, where very few people can get to easily, but a lot of people are very willing to, whereas for the people who just want the tech and want something seamless in their lives, 2,500 rand, it's right within the affordability spectrum of most tech happy people who want something to break them. Also, because obviously, like you said, there's all of R&D that goes into these products, and we want our customers to know that these are fully accredited, extremely secure products. And if it was a 50 rand, then would you believe that that really could do that? So obviously, to make it do what it does, it had to go through all of that. Yeah, so all the accreditation, I mean, it takes months and even years to actually get that right. The component has to be accredited by various organizations, including Visa and MasterCard, the EMV code accreditation. So that accreditation is one of the most important for our devices. And costly, I'm sure. Very costly. And in euros. And every size, every material, every iteration has to be accredited. That's right. So the gold one has its own accreditation, the ceramic one has its own accreditation, they have their own, yeah, it's quite a journey. Yeah. But we don't, you know, as South Africans, especially, we understand security risks, I think, better than most Europeans and so on. And we understand how the security factor of what we're building is actually probably at the pinnacle of what we're doing, the primary focus is, is it secure? Yes. Okay. Then doesn't make my life more convenient. Absolutely. That's how we've approached it. Jake, what's the go-to-market strategy here? I imagine you could either sell this direct. You could sell it through traditional jewelry type stores, or you could sell it through tech stores, which route are you going? So direct to customer. Direct to customer. And customer. I would say that eventually we plan for this to be a mass market product, but in the beginning, we are appealing to those who really are into convenience, which pretty much is everybody. But obviously, also because of the price points, we do understand we're targeting, you know, certain demographics. And maybe slightly tech-savvy audience as well, initially. Tech-savvy audiences, and like somebody who wants to spend $30,000 on a gold ring, is a very specific type of person. But you know, we want to launch it in a premium way, and at a later stage, make it accessible to absolutely everybody. So I'll go to market strategy. You know, everybody thinks this has been my personal experience. That's just, let's launch a product that we're going to sell $100 million to absolutely everybody. You know, before you launch $100 million, people make sure you can get it right for the initial users, the premium people that buy it first. So I'll go to market strategy is to target those people first, and then from that point to move to the mass market. And do you see an opportunity eventually to sell the rings through the banks, or possibly even through the cellular networks? I mean, that could happen off the bat. So if a banker. If a banker watching, and you would like your own customized version of those wearable, we can do that. Okay. So imagine it'll be a unique selling proposition for a bank, you know, come and sign up for a suite of products with X Bank, and we'll give you a subsidized ring. Yeah, for sure. So we do, we do offer that. And even for wearable companies, if you're thinking about making your own wearable, and you want to make something that no one's thought of yet, we can't help you do that. Because we've basically, in doing all our R and D, we've basically bridged all the gaps between the technology and the software, and how it all works together. So that wasn't the goal initially, but now we can basically say, if you're a wearable company, and you want to launch it, we can enable you. It doesn't have to be just in South Africa either, anywhere, practically. And that's, yeah, I think it's become one of our goals is opening up this market in some way to make it more accessible, because, sure, you've heard the saying un-banked, un-banked the bank, and all of that kind of thing, that's not really our goal. I think it's a craze that's going on right now, and everyone's trying to be that, not a bank bank, but we're not trying to do that. We're saying the banks are actually very good at being banks. We just need to help them with innovative technology so that they don't have to manage innovation and their, you know, what they go through every day, what they actually deal with the banks is very intense, so you know, leave the innovators to the innovators of smaller companies, let the banks be the banks. And what is the reaction you've been having conversations with some of the banks already? What has the feedback been? First it's like, how the hell did you do this? That's a good thing. Yeah, that's like, how did you do this? And then the next reaction is always about security. The banks are very focused on how secure is this, which is great, and luckily we have all of that in place, and we can answer all those questions, and we have, you know, from PCR DSS compliance to the EMV co-compliance. And then obviously, as it stands, we haven't approached all banks yet, we've been selective on the banks, we've approached, we're only planning to launch now. So the reaction out there has been good. I mean, well, it's been exceptionally positive, they definitely want these for their customers. Some of the banks are potentially looking at having their own versions already, but I think for the most part they are, they're just very keen to get on board and allow their customers to have these devices. I think some of the banks would need a bit more of a push because they are busy, they're busy people, they've got a lot in their plate. So to actually start the application to get this down the line is a little bit of work on their part, but it is free. And that's important. So we don't charge the banks to get on to our platform, it's completely free for them. Right. Well, we'll keep an eye on the arrangements for the banks, which would be really interesting to see who comes to market first, so keep an eye on tech central for that story. But we shouldn't have a poll. People can vote. But, okay, so this is a payment ring you're working with the banks, but because it's got NFC in it, I presume it could potentially be used for other applications as well, like consulting, concerts, ticketing, all that sort of thing. I've actually had a very good conversation a while ago with Halah, they're listening. And yes, so it can be used in various other applications, not the initial round that we launch, we won't have that available to our end customers. Currently in beta testing. Currently in beta testing. You can offer it as custom solutions to other companies looking to offer this to their customers. Access control, opening your car door, we've already got an integration of Tesla. Not that it's important for the South African market, it's just that they were the first company to have the right APIs and things to integrate into and they are very forward-thinking company. Yeah. So there are any other common manufacturer companies out there? Well, yeah, and we're not looking for that right now, but if you would like to talk, we'll always have to, especially Ferrari. So all of your access control, again, make your life convenient. So the access control side of things, your gem tag, your complex, your tag to get into your complex, your tag to get into your office, all can be on the same place, including your payment card. And what about trains? Cup train. Cup train, yeah, absolutely. If you're traveling to the UK, you can put your Forex card on and your Oyster card and then use them. And rewards programs and things like that can work on our Ring as well, again, not integrated yet, but something we're looking at in the future. Yeah. So at the moment, you can put a payment card and you can put something like an Oyster card on as it stands. Wow. Yeah. So it's kind of programmable by the end users. It is. It is. But at the moment, we're only releasing payment card functionality out into the public. Yeah. Just so that we, you know, yeah, I just want to rush too quickly. I don't know. Give too much too fast. And then what, what are we? A payment company or a, you know, but in the end of the day, it was something we discussed also when, when we were coming up with the concept was, is it a bigger pet feet peeve in South Africa to use it for transport or to use it for something like payments? Payments is every day. You can do this every day and it's something that really solves something that's inconvenient and times when it's not working or you're in a queue and you're rushed. This is really convenient, you know, having to charge another device. It's just more inconvenient for you. So this is now going to the simplicity of convenience for the end customer. And it was way harder to build. If we wanted to launch an access control, that could have been like the easiest thing to start on. But I don't think many people would be like, this is solving a huge issue for them in their lives overseas, you know, where like you said with Oystercard and using trains and things like that, where it's an everyday thing for you all the time, often on trains. That's probably a big pet peeve to somebody overseas. So for our market chance on Africa payments is probably the biggest selling point. So we had to launch on that. Yeah. Most difficult first. If you're going to eat, if your job's to eat big frogs, then start with the biggest, I don't know. That's the saying. Lawrence Baker. So I must ask about Samsung, because they earlier this year pre-launched some sort of smart ring. Yes. And Apple is rumoured to be possibly be launching something, maybe even in September when it announces the iPhone 16. So the market could suddenly get quite crowded later this year. No, it's going to be great for it. It's great. You should not worry about this competition. No, because it means that it is the future and we're riding a wave of something that is going to be big and important to people. So we've all got cell phones. And cell phones have pretty much come as far as they can really go. What more can they do? They've made them bigger. They've made this more. They're like, there's not much more they can do. They can make it slightly faster, but it's a full computer in your pocket. How much more can we take it? So I think even the cell phone companies know the next step is wearables, because it's the only next step before we have no technology. And we're just using our body to do the things we wanted to do, you're all in, and things like that. So, yeah. Yeah. So the rings that they're launching are going to be focused on health. Oh, yeah. The health rings they're launching, similar to Aura, if you shout out to Aura, they're a great company. Also powered by battery. Yeah. They are, of course, powered by battery. Oh, okay. Yeah. They will need to be, and their focus is health. So you're... So they'll be thicker as well, I presume. They are a bit thicker. We do actually have a fun step for health ring as well. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. The health benefits of a ring versus a watch, so basically it's better at monitoring your sleep. It's better at monitoring your heart rate and your oxygen saturation, much better than a smart watch. Interesting. So that's actually their agenda is for the health side. Okay. You've ever slept with a watch on to try and monitor your sleep. It is very uncomfortable, whereas if you had a ring on, you probably wouldn't even notice. That's the direction they're heading. But, again, it comes back to the same thing for us, because we were developing a prototype just to see how it works and we were able to build a successful prototype. It's battery powered. But it goes back to the same core of what we don't want to achieve now, which is the simplicity of targeting a super big pain point, pain and pain point. But the aura ring is a great product, but to us, they're not solving a pain point. They're providing another product that exists in maybe a better format or a different format. So just like you have a smart watch that can, as long as it's explaining your track or your health functionality and all of that, the ring's doing the same thing just in a different way, the health ring, whereas when we get this question often, you know, why a payment ring versus a watch? If I want to wear a payment watch that's a smart watch, why I want to wear the ring? And for us, it's not one versus the other. It's because one is convenient in a totally different way. You know, you don't have to charge this, you don't have to power it in it. It will come in a situation and it's happened to me where all your devices have died and you didn't have your wallet on you or your card wasn't working and you are now stuck and able to make a payment somewhere. Well, guess what, you can. Very convenient. So ultimately, the studies have shown this is a MasterCard study that when presented with every payment option, if someone in public goes out with a phone, with a smart watch, with a wallet, with full of credit cards and so on, and a payment wearable. Nine out of ten payments, they'll use their payment wearable. The passive paper. It's like electricity. It always follows the path of least resistance. And that's human nature. This is what's simplest and easiest and quickest and that's what we've built. OK. Launching in South Africa, do you have plans to, I mean, this must have a universal application. Do you, what are your plans for going international with it? Definitely it would be in something we would like to do. So Africa doesn't have anything like this right now, so obviously, and we from South Africa we're passionate about doing, you know, things in our own country. Of course, there are other countries that haven't got any payment wearables like this that we would like to look at, but I would say that's like Phase 15. We've got so much to do and we can only do so much, but ultimately, you know, start at home, we know that this is going to be great for the market. There are other countries that we'd like to get into and we'll start those conversations as soon as possible. If they are banks overseas that will contact us first, then we'll be very happy to help them. Ultimately, you know, we have a good relationship with the South African banks as it stands, and we are South African, both born and bred South African, so you understand what your people are looking for and you understand what the banks here are doing. So, you know, in places like America, their banking system is totally different to here. I mean, I've heard, I can't confirm this is true, but I've heard there are still certain banks that they can't, you can't do wireless transfer from bank to bank, and we've had that for years and securities and the chip and pen is brand new to them. It's only been there for a few years. It's just, they're in the stone age of banks. They still use chicks in America. They do, yeah. So, it's, but like Americans understand that and, you know, maybe at a later stage we could look at it, but we would have to really understand those nuances, yeah. Absolutely. So, maybe expanding to markets that are more similar to how it's like the UK, possibly. So, these do actually exist in the EU, which is also a good point for us because the first thing you do when you come up with an idea to develop a business is you go and see, actually, has somebody else invented this so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. And when our first first came out of the idea, there wasn't really much out. There was one company, talks of it, that they were looking to launch in the UK and before that they had started on access control in their ring, but it's not a big thing, like it's because access control is not the biggest pain point. So maybe you could sell it to like corporate companies to sell it to the individual, wouldn't really work. And as we were developing, they started developing in their ecosystems. So in the EU, it is now pretty well used, especially in the UK. A lot of that is because of the public transport, because of that needing to be really quick and pull your hand out and pay without having to worry about moving into your pockets and carrying things and moving between trains and meetings. So would we enter into the EU? Not right now. I don't think it makes sense for us to do that. Yeah. So it exists in certain countries and the EU, certain countries don't even have it yet. We might approach those countries later down the line, but definitely not, you know, before we've got our hold in South Africa. Because I think South Africans need this more right now. So, you know, we can expand and we can technically launch in the EU faster than we can in South Africa. Because we already have over 30 banks on board in the EU because of our group, our technology group. So technically, we could launch in the EU faster than South Africa, but we want to launch in South Africa. This is, we want these rings because we want one from South Africa. We want to use that. So that's why we've started this whole thing. Great. Great. So when can I buy one? Tomorrow. But it might not work right now. You need the bank to be on board. We need to onboard banks. So our technology works out. Everything is there in the back end. And we are currently in talks with some banks, which we can't disclose right now. Sure. Some parts of it. It's a matter of weeks. We should have some news on that, right? We should have at least one bank on in the next few weeks. And big South African bank, if you don't have an account there, then you can just open one like a credit card account with them and then tokenize that on to your device. And of course, we are looking at onboard all major banks in South Africa at the latest stages. We will also look at other integrations. But right now, key focus is, hello banks, come on board and get this to our end consumers. But for the, if you want to buy one now, you can go reserve yours on our website, right now. What is your website address? It is visopay.com, go on to there, check out the different devices we have, choose which one you like, tell us, fill out the form, tell us which bank you're with, we'll give you your price points, we'll give you all of that information and then when it's ready, we'll get hold of you and say, your ring is, we're going to launch, here's her ring, come in, it's on its way. Well, it's really fantastic to see innovation like this coming out of South Africa. I wish you both the best of luck in this business and developing it and we look forward to seeing exactly which banks come on board and what take up is Jake Pinkers and Lawrence Baker are directors of visopay. Thank you so much for coming into the studio and sharing your insights with Tech Central today. I appreciate it. Thank you for having us. Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING] (drum roll)