Pretoria, South Africa - RiovicPay has issued R100 000 worth of credit as part of its pre-launch campaign with the consent of its investors to activate our early users and help them figure out how everything works. This comes after we realized, through research and experiments that most people especially in South Africa signup, but hardly use or even return websites and applications after registration. With a balance of R100 we are certain that 1000 new user will return to spend it.

On March 27, 2015 the new South African fintech startup that would change the way people send money announced its launch through Finweek. The solutions the company brought across were necessary and solved real problems, access to to cross-border money remittance services on a holiday, weekend or after hours and the cost of transferring the money. The launched was however put on hold for a few months due compliance issues and to make sure that its application would be user-friendly.

International money transfers are complicated. Sending and receiving money from the United Kingdom to South Africa through MoneyGram or Western Union has a lot of procedures which in turn take up a lot of time. Local small business owners have difficulty accepting credit and debit cards due to the lack of a simple system that makes this possible. They become limited to cash-only transactions which limit the number of sales they make. This is where we come in. We provide a cashless and card-less money transfer solution that lets people deposit money into their accounts easily and send money to each other globally online and receive this money instantly. This is a breakthrough, especially in a country like South Africa where the remittance market is occupied by the traditional system.

Moving money over distance is for all people, whether to send migrant labor remittances, to transfer emergency funds to and from friends and family, to move money between small business people and traders, to provide government support payments, or to pay utility bills, school fees, or other obligations. When people have access to better options for moving money, the benefits can be significant. RiovicPay's vision is to enable people and businesses to send, receive, deposit and withdraw money all over the world, instantly, in real-time without any hassle.

There are companies operating in cross-border money remittance which provide money transfer services. The most familiar and dominant companies are Western Union and MoneyGram. There are other companies like postal companies, mobile operators and stores like Shoprite, Checkers and Spar that offer domestic remittance services to the public. There are also informal cases where users send cash with bus drivers, traveling acquaintances or informal “hawala” services or travel to deliver their own money in person. All these differ from the company when it comes to access, the technology it uses, the speed it takes it to send money, the safety of transfers and the control the sender has in the transaction. RiovicPay also concentrates in the peer-to-peer (P2P) payment niche and differs from others in that it is present in South Africa and can address the needs of customers within the region directly.

According to Phiwa Nkambule, the founder, RiovicPay will enable family members, friends and business partners to send and receive money globally in real-time without any hassle making life simpler and faster. He says “The only information needed to transfer money another user is an email addresses of the receiver. Every vendor with an email address will be able to receive payments from credit/debit cards upping their sales and improving their business altogether.” The RiovicPay system builds upon the existing financial infrastructure of bank accounts and credit/debit cards and creates a simple, swift and secure payment system.

We therefore invite you to signup and start experiencing the simplest money transfer solution in the land. You will receive R100 upon your initial registration.