Within FinTech, there are several sub-sectors, including Payments and Payment Infrastructure.

Payments and Payment Infrastructure is a large and growing part of global economies. This is equally relevant in South Africa and increasingly so across the African continent. Factors driving this growth are being stimulated by mobile communications, growing consumer interest in and exposure to the benefits of digital currency, and a growing choice of applications, including:

• Increasing Adoption of and Comfort with Card Based and Digital Currency
  There is increasing consumer comfort with digital currency and the seamless experience in new forms of payment delivery (including card based payments). In Emerging Markets, there is increasing focus on financial inclusion and the promise of more cost-effective services brought about through technology. With increasing consumer acceptance, Governments recognize that electronic payments reduce corruption, increase accountability, boost financial inclusion, reduce fraud and enhance security. The secular shift away from the use of cash has grown and continues to accelerate.
• Changes in Consumer Behaviour
  Increasing "mobile-first" habits, the willingness of consumers to share personal experiences and data, and the desire for highly curated information characterizes an increasingly larger portion of consumers. This is driving consumers to demand more from the institutions with whom they interact and on whom they rely for financial transactions. Consumers have increased expectations of immediate and more bespoke experiences.
• Changes in Retailer Requirements
  Retailers and other market participants are seeking more direct and individualized relationships with their customers / patrons. Big data and multichannel retailing are driving retailers to seek more tailored, cost effective solutions to enhance their customer experiences.
• Regulation and Security Concerns
  Regulation and threats to security continue to drive payment infrastructure participants to refresh their systems with more security and more protective technology platforms.

African Resonance and Dashpay, on behalf of and in association with their institutional clients, are well positioned to (i) respond to changing market and institutional clients' end-market customer needs, (ii) help clients to expand the applicability and versatility of electronic and card payments, (iii) innovate, and (iv) deliver cost effective solutions to institutional clients and others in South Africa and across the rest of Africa.

African Resonance is a leading provider of payment infrastructure and related services to established financial institutions, emerging payment service providers, the hospitality industry and retail operators. African Resonance designs, develops and implements end-to-end solutions, including full service device fleet management, to its institutional clients and corporate customers. African Resonance supplies electronic point-of-sale and like devices, and provides merchants with a single device capable of providing both banking and non-banking products and services. Over a period of 14 years African Resonance has evolved into a well-established, reputable and growing company with a range of customer and supplier relationships, a skilled and motivated team of employees and established operating processes. This is supported by access to a sophisticated and strategically valuable technology platform utilised to offer their institutional clients secure, cost effective, market-leading customer service levels and innovative products and solutions in the South African payments market.

• Established Blue Chip and Emerging Customer Base
  Since its formation, African Resonance has concluded supply and service arrangements with most of the leading retail banks in South Africa, for the supply of payment related equipment and services. Collectively these institutions account for the vast majority of payments processed in retail environments in South Africa. African Resonance has also concluded relationships with other smaller financial institutions, the hospitality industry and other participants in the payments value chain.
• Established Relationship with Leading, World Class Suppliers
  African Resonance has an established and long-standing relationship with the leading manufacturer and supplier of payment devices. Ingenico Group, based in France, is the world's leading manufacturer of payment terminals and a provider of seamless payment solutions. African Resonance is regarded and recognised as a centre of excellence for Ingenico, both as distributor and through its skilled customer service and maintenance capacity.
• Exclusive Access to Proprietary Technology
  African Resonance has invested heavily in its technology platforms and has the exclusive right to use a suite of infrastructure and terminal fleet enterprise management solutions in South Africa. Forming part of the African Resonance Acquisition, these exclusive rights have been expanded to cover the provision of services throughout Africa. These technologies allow African Resonance to manage, within a single workflow management platform, a terminal estate business covering remote merchant management, contract management, workflow management, asset management, call centre logging, problem resolution management, SLA management, terminal dispatch and activation of banking and non-banking products.

Dashpay was initially conceived as a traditional merchant acquirer when first established in 2013. Since that time a significant amount has been invested in the development of Dashpay's systems and technology, with further resources being allocated to complete its multi-product transacting platform, essentially for the facilitation of Business-to-Business payment related products in conjunction with its institutional client base. Dashpay presently operates within the South African national payments infrastructure, continually broadening its market reach, while concurrently establishing and securing the transaction capacity of its technology platforms. Dashpay services are ideally suited to serving the rapidly changing needs for secure payment systems, and financial management across Africa. CAPPREC recognises the high demand and potential growth in those destinations.

Traditional financial institutions and financial services companies, often constrained by legacy systems and platforms, have for various reasons struggled to respond to changing customer needs or provide innovative payment related services to non-traditional merchants, be they retailers, wholesalers, other independent vendors, and more particularly SMMEs. Dashpay's technology platforms are adaptable and compatible with electronic point of sales devices and state of the art switching and processing capabilities. These can be offered directly to SMME retailers and suppliers to SMME retailers to expand this presently underserviced market in which electronic payments, secure recovery and other financial service products, disciplines and controls could become helpful and applicable.

The solutions make the concept of "universal acquiring", now globally recognised as critical to having a successful merchant acquiring offering, seamless and cost effective. Universal acquiring (i.e. allowing a single device to be used by multiple parties to offer multiple and differentiated products and services) will drive penetration among retailers, allow financial and banking institutions to offer tailored solutions to their clients and should materially reduce bank customer churn. It is expected that the Dashpay solutions and service offerings will be formally unveiled during the current financial year.

Dashpay is the exclusive importer and distributor for Newland Payment Technology in the SADC region. The company has independent Sales Organisation (ISO) contracts in place with three banks which allows it to rent POS terminals to merchants directly and earn a margin on the merchant services commission. Dashpay's aggregator contract with two banks allows the company to sign up merchants directly and send transactions to the host banks via its Traderoot Switch.

Dashpay has also developed Dashpay Glass, a tap-on phone SoftPOS App for Android devices using Halo Dot as its core software engine. Dashpay Glass supports re-branding for customers who want to rapidly deploy their own SoftPOS application and will target the SMME merchant market with its innovative and competitive offering.

LayUp is Africa's first fully digital Lay-By and recurring payments business and offers a Payments Association South Africa (PASA) certified omnichannel digitised payment plan solution for retailers, opening new revenue streams for merchants, whilst simultaneously providing improved access for consumers. In South Africa alone, over 20 million people do not have access to financial services and LayUp's mission is to help create financial inclusion throughout Africa. One of the key distinguishing features of this product in the Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) market, is that LayUp is not a credit product, it is effectively a directed savings plan. By offering businesses a flexible, interest-free instalment system, LayUp will help to transition businesses legacy systems into a new era of digital payments. Merchants are reporting basket values of approximately three times larger using this product. As a result, LayUp has substantially increased the number of merchants signed up for its service offering and has seen a material increase in the number of payment plans initiated on the platform.

The offering is available as a plug-in with many e-commerce sites, and is now also available on Dashpay-supplied physical Android terminals at points of sale. It will soon be available on the Linux devices offered to the banks, and through them to the merchants.

Halo Dot is a tap-to-phone contactless payment solution developed by Synthesis. Certifications by Visa, Mastercard, and American Express for PIN entry enable acceptance of high-value transactions and make Halo Dot a complete software alternative to physical POS devices.. The solution is world class and use-cases for the deployment of Halo Dot as a software development kit (SDK), an app or a payment-as-a-service are unbounded. The team is focused on capturing the opportunity in a variety of local, regional and international markets.

The company anticipates that significant benefits will flow from this initiative for the Payments and Software divisions. The Group is also working with channel partners to commercialise and sell Halo Dot throughout the rest of Africa, and in other emerging markets in Asia Pacific as well as Central and Western Europe.

Synthesis, founded in 1997, offers highly specialised software development, consulting and integration services and technology based product solutions to banking and other financial institutions in South Africa and other emerging markets. Synthesis' products and services enable clients to perform business processing functions, meet regulatory requirements, integrate with trading platforms and exchanges and secure sensitive information.

Synthesis' development and consulting initiatives are responsive to the commercial and technology imperatives of the institutional financial services clients that it serves. Executed in close collaboration with their clients, the Synthesis Digital Channel Initiatives deliver an exceptional end-user customer experience while maintaining information security and transaction integrity.

Synthesis is an accredited AWS Consulting Partner and Synthesis' "cloud transformation" initiatives assist their clients in becoming "cloud ready", to execute mass migrations, to harness the benefits of big data analytics and to extract the cost savings and regulatory benefits of compliance. This is an increasing priority for financial services institutions across Africa.

Synthesis' product solutions for banks and financial services institutions include online banking solutions and regulatory reporting solutions for both SARS (tax) and SARB (balance of payments). There is an increasing regulatory and reporting burden being imposed on financial institutions in the banking, insurance and securities industries. Banks and other providers of consumer facing financial services are increasingly investing in systems and service offerings to respond to ever more demanding customer needs. This presents a compelling growth opportunity for Synthesis. These products also have global application and have led to international expansion opportunities for Synthesis.

Founded in 2011, Responsive is a digital solutions group that creates web and mobile products that delight users by following a design thinking approach and expertly implementing the best technology solution for clients across South Africa, the USA, Europe and the United Kingdom. The group comprises three South African companies – Responsive Tech Proprietary Limited and Responsive Digital Proprietary Limited (collectively called Responsive Build) and Rethink Digital Solutions Proprietary Limited - and has a proven, 10-year track record of delivering complex digital projects for leading South African and international blue-chip clients.

Rethink Digital specialises in designing delightful experiences for complex digital products by following a design thinking approach and focusing on research, strategy, User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design as well as usability testing to establish user-centricity and satisfy user needs and business goals.

Responsive Build specialises in developing fast, secure and scalable applications in the cloud using expert skills, best practice processes and industry-proven technology to get digital products to market fast, drive results and unlock business value.

Capital Appreciation subscribed for 20% of the shares in Netherlands-based Regal Digital B.V. Regal Digital is the holding company of Firelava, a consulting services business focusing on Web 3.0 technologies, non-fungible tokens (NFT) and Blockchain solutions, Google Firebase and cloud specialist services as well as solution architecture consultation. Regal Digital has an 80% shareholding in Flamelink B.V., a 'software-as-a-service' (SaaS) solution offering a headless Content Management System (CMS) for Google's Firebase, and is currently the de facto Firebase CMS with the most feature-rich offering in the market.

Dariel is an engineering-focused IT architecture and software development group with a 22-year track record of developing complex business applications for the Healthcare, telecommunications, hospitality, mining and manufacturing, financial services, insurance and FinTech sectors.

Dariel delivers industry-changing software solutions by utilizing highly skilled, experienced and passionate technologists.

The Dariel service offering includes software development, consulting, implementation, integration services, maintenance and support, as well as cloud services across Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

AssetPool is a cloud-first business developed in the AWS ecosystem. The company's SaaS B2B platform is focused on asset management, tracking, maintenance, compliance and verification. AssetPool operates in more than 30 countries across Africa, as well as in the UK, the US and Australia. Clients include DHL, Fidelity ADT, Balwin Properties, Thiess Mining, K2 Medical and Bosch-Rexroth.

Capital Appreciation participated by way of a convertible loan in AssetPool. Once the convertible loan is converted into equity, the Group will own 33% of AssetPool.