\u201cMoney is one of the most significant inventions in human history. But it was designed years and years ago. Consider this: what would money look like if we could redesign it today?\u201d<\/p>\n
These are the thought-provoking insights of Meijert de Wijn. He is co-founder of Celbux, a South African software company set on revolutionising the world of money.<\/p>\n
Having worked for two decades in the financial sector, de Wijn\u2019s academic grounding in philosophy and psychology led him to question how the industry worked, to examine its values and to explore what\u2019s right and fair.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople don\u2019t get how much money costs. Money costs a lot. It\u2019s an expensive system that originated to facilitate trade,\u201d explains de Wijn. \u201cThat got me thinking: if we can take that cost out of the system give it back to the people, everyone wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
When cloud computing emerged, de Wijn seized the opportunity to do things differently and to disrupt the market. Celbux was born.<\/p>\n
Celbux was built in the cloud right from the start. De Wijn was quick to recognise that, while not first to market, Google would be one of cloud\u2019s success stories. He placed his bets and committed Celbux to Google\u2019s Cloud Platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was the right decision. There are a lot of shared values between us,\u201d explains de Wijn. \u201cGoogle is known for shaking things up. It entered the search engine market and transformed it, and it has done the same in the cloud space. Likewise at Celbux, we\u2019re all about challenging the status quo and pushing boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Celbux has developed a software solution that uses Google\u2019s Cloud Platform to enable fast, secure and affordable transactions between anyone, across any device.<\/p>\n
A typical transaction involves three parties: the funder who puts money onto the system (and can place rules on how, when and where the money is spent); the recipient of that value; and the merchant who exchanges the value for goods and services.<\/p>\n
Celbux only earns when there is a value exchange. \u201cWe only make money from the merchants and only when they have made money,\u201d explains de Wijn. \u201cWe\u2019ve brought value to the merchant, we brought the merchant a customer that spent and spent electronically. That\u2019s where we take a fee.\u201d<\/p>\n
For example, an institution might need to provide grant funds to school students for tuition, food, books and accommodation.<\/p>\n
It places the money on the Celbux platform, applying rules about what the students can buy and from which merchants. 100% of the value funded is safely received by the students, accessible through wallets on their smart or feature mobile phones. The students can then spend the money on the intended products from the designated merchants using their mobile devices.<\/p>\n
Celbux earns a fee from the merchant after students have bought goods – ensuring the full value of the grant is realised by the students it was intended for.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy allowing parties to place rules at the point of payment, Celbux has transformed money into smart money. If a business sends you money, it can control where and how you spend that money \u2013 groceries rather than entertainment for example. And then after payment, it has the capability to provide money back into the wallet as part of a loyalty programme. And it happens instantly – the consumer doesn\u2019t have to wait days for it to be processed,\u201d says de Wijn.<\/p>\n
Celbux is popular with companies of all sizes and is working with an impressive list of merchants. These companies leverage their loyalty programmes, incentivising consumers, rewarding them and directing their spending.<\/p>\n
Celbux manages the complexity of the infinitely configurable capability, allowing merchants to apply their programme through a simple integration layer and removing the logistics and costs associated with traditional loyalty programmes.<\/p>\n
Well-known merchants include Africa’s largest food retailer; South Africa\u2019s leading pharmacy group Dis-Chem Pharmacies; health, beauty and lifestyle retailer Clicks; leading online store Takealot.com; as well as global brands such as McDonald\u2019s and Burger King.<\/p>\n
Celbux is seeing significant uptake from consumers. A Celbux wallet is created in real-time, meaning no lengthy sign-up or vetting process. This makes it inherently accessible to everyone. Consumers can send money to anyone with a mobile number, whether they have a Celbux wallet or not.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasic transactional banking services in South Africa can be expensive and are not accessible to all. That is no fault of traditional providers, but it is time to take financial services to the people that need them. We want to be financially inclusive and create a future where people don\u2019t have to travel or queue for hours just to receive or spend money,\u201d says de Wijn.<\/p>\n
Google is integral to the success of Celbux. As the number of Celbux merchants grows, so does the number of transactions it needs to support.<\/p>\n
The Google Cloud Platform seamlessly scales to accommodate this, and to date has handled more than 35 million Celbux transactions. \u201cCelbux wants to disburse value to people and, with Google, we can do that at scale, efficiently and in an instant,\u201d says de Wijn.<\/p>\n
Reliability is also key. When preparing for a recent collaboration with a bank, Celbux demonstrated that over a three-year period, the platform\u2019s longest downtime was 10 milliseconds. \u201cWe have built Celbux to be the system that every time you trade, it just works,\u201d explains de Wijn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Google, we don\u2019t need to care if a server breaks. Google\u2019s Cloud Platform has been built so that if it breaks, the workload shifts to another server. It is highly redundant, highly available and highly scalable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The team at Celbux value and benefit from Google\u2019s ongoing innovation – from Machine Learning and Big Data through to new kinds of security.<\/p>\n
The technologies are integrated into Google\u2019s Cloud Platform. \u201cWe\u2019re doing lots of cool stuff with the help of Google. We\u2019re early adopters of Google software so we provide feedback and challenge their engineers,\u201d says de Wijn.<\/p>\n
However, when it comes to innovation at Celbux, this isn\u2019t all channelled into the creation of an increasingly feature-rich platform with fancy new functions being added every day. Instead innovation is focused on making the product super simple, easy and reliable.<\/p>\n
Celbux\u2019s relationship with Google has historically been handled from the US. Recently however, Celbux has partnered with the South African team at Google, Google Cloud Premier Partner DotModus<\/a><\/strong>, and Digicloud Africa<\/a><\/strong>, Google\u2019s enablement partner in Africa.<\/p>\n With their shared understanding and passion for the continent, the goal is to help Celbux expand its reach further across Africa.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is such an awesome place to make a difference and Google has a great suite of products and tools ready to change how Africa operates. We want to partner with lots of African tech companies, and show people that technology isn\u2019t just about selfies or headphones, but it\u2019s about changing how people live.\u201d<\/p>\n The success of Celbux so far is undeniable \u2013 its turnover since its inception has reached ZAR 7 billion. But de Wijn remains ambitious and true to achieving his original vision: \u201cEverybody thinks money is the whole game, but money\u2019s purpose is to be spent. People need to focus on what they want, on the value they want, not on money. So, let\u2019s have an economy based on value exchange \u2013 a place where people connect. A world of value-providers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cMoney is one of the most significant inventions in human history. But it was designed years and years ago. Consider this: what would money look like if we could redesign it today?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":462408,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10459],"tags":[15031],"class_list":["post-462402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry-news","tag-dotmodus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463308,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462402\/revisions\/463308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}