JOHANNESBURG-South African businesses need to capitalize on the potential that exists in bio-metric enabled cashless transactions as they can now embed Software Development Kits, SDKs, into their own apps to biometrically enable the apps to validate identities while a customer is registering, logging on or processing a cashless transaction. Business Development Director for local bio-metric authentication specialists, Fides Cloud Technologies, Craig Hills says, “the major barrier to the adoption of bio-metrics for retail and other transactional activities in the last decade has been the need for additional hardware to verify identities but with modern SDK’s, that can be a thing of the past.”

Hills, who will be speaking on the subject of Bio-metrics in the cashless system and future possibilities at the 2019 Cashless Payments Summit taking place at Emperors Palace in Johannesburg on the 7th and 8th of November, added that the introduction of relatively cheap smartphones with cameras which have sufficient quality to capture a bio-metric image, has allowed for bio-metrics to be included in any customer engagement strategies both in branch and remotely at retail shops.

Still on how retail service providers can benefit from modern cashless payment systems which are constantly innovating, innovative bitcoin company Centbee CEO, Angus Brown, said “retailers and other businesses need to take advantage of the fact that South Africans are in the top five global adopters of cryptocurrency.”   

Looking at how some retailers, especially smaller one’s view cryptocurrencies, Brown said, ‘They do not need to understand how cryptocurrencies work – they just need a Bitcoin Payment Processor, which acts like an acquiring bank to handle all this for them”.

Brown, who will also be speaking at the 2019 Cashless Payments Summit said paying by scanning a QR code is becoming ubiquitous and in some countries is now the de-facto payment type while BitcoinSV is currently processing at the speed of thousands of transactions per second, and provides instant confirmation – completely suitable as a payments clearing and settlement network.

This year, the Cashless Payments Summit, being organized by Vukani Communications will also feature speakers like Farieda Mayet from Huawei who will showcase new developments in technological infrastructure that enable a successful digital economy, Brett Williams from Zapper will be evaluating how and why banks and retailers need to collaborate in the cashless system.  Arthur Matsaudza from stock exchange listed digital solutions giant, Cassava Smartech, which owns Ecocash will be looking at the constant race to innovate, deliver and thrive despite a myriad of operational challenges in the cashless sphere while Reneitte Van der Merwe from ABSA, will be talking about cashless payments in the informal economy. Tracey Sibanda for Vukani Communications