Just after sunrise in a Cape Town suburb, a minibus taxi pulls up outside a family home. The driver leans out, hands over a bag heavy with cash, and drives off again. It’s a daily ritual — and a dangerous one.
For generations, South Africa’s taxi operators have run on cash: quick, tangible and trusted, but also risky, inefficient and invisible to the formal financial system.
That image — a taxi full of commuters and cash — was the spark behind Loop Taxi (Loop) a South African mobility and payments startup that has quietly built one of the continent’s most practical fintech solutions. Instead of trying to replace cash with banking apps or QR codes, Loop met commuters and drivers where they already were on WhatsApp.
The result is deceptively simple. Using only a phone and a chat window, taxi drivers, commuters and small businesses can now send and receive instant, free payments — no bank charges, no waiting periods, and no need for expensive card machines.
But what started as a way to digitise taxi fares has become something far bigger. Loop is now powering corporate staff transport, township commerce and even informal retail payments. In the process, it injected over R50 million back into local communities and created financial records for workers who previously operated entirely outside the system.
For investors and founders, Loop offers a compelling case study in contextual innovation — technology that doesn’t disrupt behaviour but enhances it. In a market where cash is still king, Loop’s founders built a digital alternative that feels exactly like cash: instant, trusted and right at your fingertips.
Why Digital Banking Fails Africa’s Informal Economy — And How Loop Solved It
Unlike in countries like Kenya where commuters leverage platforms such as M-Pesa to pay for rides, South African commuters rely almost entirely on cash. The taxi industry, despite moving an estimated 15 million passengers daily and generating more than R50 billion a year, remains largely informal.
Previous attempts to digitise payments in this sector have consistently failed — not because of technology, but because of human behaviour.
Key factors include:
1.Trust and familiarity
Both passengers and drivers tend to rely on cash because it is instant and universally accepted. Digital systems often require trust and confidence that the payment will not fail mid-ride and that the payment will reflect instantly, void of bank charges.
As Loop co-founder Jamie Wyngaard explains: “If I pay you with an EFT, you might only get the money two days later, and that’s if we’re with the same bank. Add bank charges, and digital payments make no sense to a driver who needs to buy fuel right now. We realised we aren’t competing with banks; we’re competing with cash.”
2.Affordability
Data costs are quite high in South Africa –some of the highest in Africa – and 4G device penetration remains uneven. Many areas have limited connectivity, making traditional app-based payment solutions inaccessible to large segments of the population.
3.Fragmented regulatory landscape
In South Africa the taxi industry is highly decentralised, with numerous regional associations operating semi-independently. This makes introducing any single, standardised payment system complex.
For Loop, the insight was clear: solving for digital payments in the informal economy required rethinking the infrastructure, not the customer.
How Loop Built Africa’s Leading WhatsApp Payment Platform
For most startups, the question of whether to build a standalone app or leverage existing platforms is critical. For Loop, that decision was simple.
Wyngaard says the breakthrough came during fieldwork with commuters and drivers:
“We spoke to our customers and realised that even when they run out of phone space, they’ll delete every app - including banking apps - but not WhatsApp. It’s how people communicate with their families and friends every day. So we asked ourselves: can we build a payment system around something people will never delete? And we did.”
Now, through WhatsApp, Loop users can send and receive payments instantly and free of charge. The process mimics the immediacy and transparency of cash, while removing the associated risks of theft and loss.
“We didn’t want to change behaviour,” Wyngaard says. “We wanted to understand it and enhance it.”
That behavioural insight — meeting users where they already are — became Loop’s foundation and one of its strongest competitive advantages.
From Taxi Fares to Township Commerce: Loop’s Fintech Ripple Effect
Digital inclusion is one of the most urgent pillars of South Africa’s broader economic transformation. For millions of citizens, access to affordable digital tools, payments and connectivity can determine whether they remain locked in the informal economy or move towards greater financial stability.
As Loop’s user base grew, the company began to notice a ripple effect. Commuters who had adopted the platform for taxi fares started asking if they could use it for their side hustles — for selling food, doing nails or running small spaza shops.
“Commuters told us, ‘I just did someone’s nails and they say they don’t have cash. Can they pay me with Loop?’ That’s when we realised we weren’t just solving a taxi problem — we were building a tool for township commerce,” Wyngaard says.
This growing demand prompted Loop to expand its services beyond mobility. Partnering with Visa, the startup enabled tap-to-phone technology, allowing users to accept card payments directly on their smartphones, no additional hardware or costly terminals required.
“With Visa’s assistance we launched tap-to-phone. You don't need extra hardware or extra software. You use your phone and WhatsApp to receive and send payments. This is enabling the market even further,” Wyngaard explains.
For small and micro business owners, this means lower transaction costs, faster payments and easier participation in the digital economy.
How Loop Is Driving Financial Inclusion for Taxi Drivers and SMEs
Access to finance remains one of the biggest barriers for taxi drivers and other informal workers. Because they primarily earn in cash, they have no verifiable financial history and therefore struggle to qualify for loans, vehicle finance or home ownership.
Loop’s payment system changes that. Every transaction creates a digital record - proof of income that can be used to access financial services and build credit profiles.
“We realised it’s expensive to be poor,” Wyngaard says. “Without assets like a fridge or stove, people end up spending more money on takeaways every day. Through Loop, we can offer an advance on future trips, so drivers can buy those appliances. In the last year alone, we’ve redirected more than R50 million back into the taxi industry — money that stays in the community instead of leaving the country.”
Converting cash flows into data flows means Loop provides its users with something the traditional banking sector has failed to deliver for decades: financial dignity.
For investors, the implications are significant. Loop isn’t just a payments company — it’s a financial data engine unlocking data-driven insights into a previously invisible segment of the economy.
Loop’s Fintech Partnerships: Collaboration Over Disruption
Loop’s success challenges a common Silicon Valley narrative: that disruption is the only path to innovation. Instead, the startup thrives on collaboration.
From its base in the Western Cape, Loop has expanded to Johannesburg and into international markets including Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, the UAE and the United States, with Zambia next in line. Partnerships have been central to that growth.
Beyond Visa, Loop works closely with the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO) to coordinate national rollout efforts and ensure adoption among taxi associations.
Wyngaard’s philosophy is simple:
“We really believe in collaboration. If someone says they work in a similar space, great — let’s work together. We’re agnostic when it comes to partnerships, and that’s helped us grow with like-minded people.”
This cooperative approach has positioned Loop not as a competitor to banks or fintechs, but as a connector — linking existing ecosystems through shared infrastructure.
Loop Expands WhatsApp Payments Beyond South Africa
As demand grows across Africa and beyond, Loop is proving that its model isn’t limited to South Africa’s unique taxi economy. In markets such as Zambia, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, where cash remains dominant and trust in formal banking is low, the startup’s low-friction, chat-based payments offer an elegant, scalable solution.
“Customers themselves are taking us across borders,” Wyngaard notes. “We’ve presented in Europe at GITEX and Seamless Africa, and people can’t believe it, no one else in the world is doing what we’re doing.”
In many ways, Loop’s innovation represents the next phase of African fintech: lightweight, embedded and behaviour-led rather than infrastructure-heavy.
Startup Lessons from Loop: Compete With Cash, Not Each Other
Loop’s story carries valuable lessons for both investors and founders. The first is that successful innovation in emerging markets is less about technology and more about empathy.
“Most corporates design products from boardrooms,” Wyngaard says. “They don’t talk to customers, and then they wonder why no one uses what they build. We were in the taxis, talking to commuters, learning from the ground up.”
For startups, this means building with customers, not for them. For investors, it highlights the importance of backing founders who understand lived experience, not just product-market theory.
What began as a simple idea — to make taxi payments safer and faster — has evolved into a platform that touches nearly every part of South Africa’s informal economy. As Wyngaard puts it:
“We thought we were building a taxi payment system. It turns out Loop is a solution provider — a company that listens, understands and builds technology that fits real life.”
The Bigger Picture: What Loop’s Success Means for African Fintech
For venture capitalists and investors scanning Africa’s fintech landscape, Loop demonstrates how small design choices — like using WhatsApp instead of a custom app — can unlock massive adoption at minimal cost. It also shows that financial inclusion and commercial scalability are not opposing goals; they can, in fact, reinforce each other.
By embedding itself within everyday communication, Loop has turned a chat app into a payments infrastructure — one that feels as natural as handing over a ten-rand note.
From a bag of cash on a Cape Town pavement to a cross-continental fintech ecosystem, Loop’s journey is proof that innovation thrives not by forcing change, but by amplifying what already works.
Lungile is the Digital Editor for Startup.Africa, with a knack for storytelling, technology and innovative ideas. Working with Startup.Africa, she takes simple ideas and turns them into amazing stories.
Lungile Msomi
Lungile Msomi
Lungile Msomi
