The Founder Files Pioneering Earned Wage Access in South Africa - paymenow
Welcome to the first episode of The Founder Files where we have 4 guests at once! Today we get insights from the founders of paymenow, a fintech that has pioneered earned wage access in South Africa. Learn how they chose private equity over VC to secure the right investor, hit key milestones for early profitability, and simplified an incredibly complex product to unlock growth. We also dive into hard lessons from geographical expansion and how they turned mistakes into a scalable model. This episode is packed with insights on scaling smarter, staying lean, and building for success.
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This episode is brought to you by Metavolve.
Metavolve turns highly capable African founders into confident business leaders by helping them develop clear and comprehensive business strategies that make building a great sustainable business less complex. Reach out to our team to learn more: https://metavolve.co/
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00:00 Introduction 03:51 What does paymenow do? 14:08 The founding story of paymenow 19:44 Challenges in the 0-1 journey 27:32 How does the money flow in the business? 30:22 paymenow’s first investor 48:49 Staying focused on the right thing before breaking even 53:45 Paying school fees when expanding to Namibia 01:02:07 Pros and cons of using a licensing model 01:13:12 Product development approach to deal with complexity 01:25:24 Complexities of having a multinational customer base 01:29:36 Making the app data-free 01:31:42 The future of paymenow 01:34:12 Why paymenow has no COO