SOUTH AFRICA – South African HR and payroll startup Radar has been acquired by mobile payments provider SnapScan as founders Kobus Ehlers and Gerrit Greeff exit their second startup to their first one.

The acquisition will see the Radar founders exit the business, while the rest of the team will join Firepay. There will be no immediate changes for existing Radar customers or the products on offer.

Radar has now been acquired by Firepay, the company behind SnapScan and a wholly owned subsidiary of Standard Bank, in a deal both parties said had the potential to unlock a variety of value-added offerings for SnapScan customers. The deal is pending regulatory approval.

Ehlers and Greeff spent close to a decade building various payments products for and with banks, culminating in SnapScan, which became South Africa’s biggest mobile payments product prior to its acquisition by Standard Bank at the end of 2016.

The pair started working on Radar – an integrated service that takes care of everything a business owner needs to grow and manage their team – alongside Richard Oakley in 2019, and signed up their first customers in 2020.

“Firepay has been one of the original investors in Radar due to the close strategic fit between their offering and what we built at Radar,” Ehlers said.

“Both companies try to solve different problems facing the same SME customers. As Radar started looking for a way to scale our distribution and take the product to the next level, it became evident that working closely with SnapScan would be a great way to achieve that.

“There are some very exciting possibilities when you combine our product with the reach and experience of the SnapScan team. We look forward to seeing the product grow and improve the lives of small business employers in South Africa.”

Marin Cundall, Firepay’s CEO, said she was excited about Radar joining the team and the opportunities it enables for the business and its future offering.

“Our focus is on providing the best experience for businesses, and we believe this acquisition will help us achieve that goal,” she said.

Zapper launches tap-on-phone payments

South Africa has been seeing innovations in payments, with another company, Zapper, announcing that merchants on the platform will be able to accept tap-on-phone payments,

This will allow them to access almost all kinds of digital payments without needing other point-of-sale (POS) hardware. And customers won’t have to have the Zapper app.

This will add PIN-on-glass functionality, letting customers who went over their verification limit be able to enter their PIN on an Android phone and go on with the transaction otherwise as normal.

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