Look at this year’s SA FinTech Awards finalists and one thing stands out. The line between banks and fintechs has all but disappeared.
Capitec is a finalist with Mama Money for their partnership. Standard Bank’s head of payments is up for Emerging Thought Leader of the Year. GoTyme Bank is competing for FinTech App of the Year against fintechs on their own turf. The old story of plucky start-ups taking on the big banks no longer fits. Even among the fintechs, collaboration is everywhere: Ozow and Happy Pay, and Jumo and Mukuru, are finalists together.
And that shift matters. Fintech now carries real weight in how South Africans pay and send money home, and it’s increasingly built into the systems people already trust. When something carries that much weight, the country needs to know who’s doing it well.
The line between South Africa’s banks and fintechs has all but disappeared, and much of the industry’s best work now happens in partnership. The second SA FinTech Awards, hosted by Finasa, the Fintech Association of South Africa, and presented by PayInc, puts that work on the record in Cape Town on 26 November.
The Financial Inclusion Impact shortlist shows what that looks like in practice. Mama Money and Mukuru help people send money across borders to family. Lesaka builds financial services for small merchants and consumers that banks have historically struggled to reach. This work rarely makes headlines, but it’s part of everyday life for the people who use it.
South African fintech has grown up. This year’s shortlist is full of banks and fintechs building together, solving problems most South Africans never see but rely on every day.
Finasa COO Daniella Lawrence
That weight has also put fintech at the centre of policy. In April, national treasury published draft Capital Flow Management Regulations that would bring crypto assets into the exchange control framework for the first time – rules that treasury has since said it will rewrite. Regulators are also looking at how buy now, pay later should be governed, with providers asking for rules written for how the product actually works. The SA FinTech Awards help build that picture, showing what’s already working in the market.
Now in their second year, the awards are hosted by Finasa and presented by PayInc. The inaugural awards in 2025 set the template, with Coen Jonker receiving the first Lifetime Achievement Award. And you can’t charm your way to one. There’s no pitch and no slick stage moment. Every finalist had to make its case in writing, against criteria built for its own category. An independent panel of five judges is now working through every one of them.
The panel brings together people who know the sector from very different seats. Lee Naik, CEO and regional president of TransUnion Africa, returns as a judge after last year’s awards. He’s joined by Ghita Erling, independent adviser at GE Advisory; Muhammad Nana, senior vice-president: digital partnerships, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa at Mastercard; Enoch Malisa, head of business development at PayInc; and Seipati Nekhondela, director: financial sector development at national treasury.
Between them, they cover credit data, card networks, the national payments utility and government policy. That mix matters, because a winner here has to make sense from every one of those seats at once.
This year’s finalists are:
- Best FinTech Start-up: Happy Pay, NjiaPay and SAPay
- Best RegTech: Comcorp, Facephi and Sumsub
- Digital Assets and Cryptocurrency Innovation: ARREL, Luno and VALR
- Excellence in Payments: Ozow and Paymentology
- Financial Inclusion Impact: Lesaka, Mama Money and Mukuru
- FinTech Innovation of the Year: Halo Dot, Intengo Market and TurnStay
- Ecosystem Collaboration of the Year: Jumo and Mukuru; Mama Money and Capitec; Ozow and Happy Pay
- FinTech App of the Year: Franc, GoTyme Bank and Karri
- Emerging Thought Leader of the Year: Cheslyn Jacobs (GoTyme), Simon Just (Standard Bank) and Thalia Pillay (Orca Fraud)
- FinTech Entrepreneur of the Year: Lincoln Mali (Lesaka), Marius Brits (360 A&S) and Simon Ellis (JEM)
- Lifetime Achievement and Visionary awards: to be announced on the night
Awards also do something simpler. They tell the people doing this work, often in small teams and under heavy regulation, that the industry sees them. Several of this year’s finalists are young companies that have built serious businesses quietly, and a night like this puts them in the same room as the banks and policymakers they’ll need to work with next.
“South African fintech has grown up. This year’s shortlist is full of banks and fintechs building together, solving problems most South Africans never see but rely on every day. That work deserves a stage, and on 26 November it gets one,” says Danielle Lawrence, COO of Finasa.
The awards take place in Cape Town on 26 November, and Finasa will use the night to make a big announcement for the industry. Attendance is by application, with places allocated by Finasa, and applications close on 12 November at www.finasa.org.za/awards. Judging closes on 13 November, and TechCentral will publish the full list of 2026 winners on 30 November.
About Finasa
The Fintech Association of South Africa (Finasa) is the industry body for South African fintech. It represents the sector on payments infrastructure, digital transformation, AI, alternative credit, buy now, pay later and regulatory engagement, and works with regulators and industry to grow a fintech sector that serves all South Africans. Visit www.finasa.org.za or follow Finasa on LinkedIn.
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