ImaliPay, a financial services platform for gig economy workers, announced its launch in South Africa today, marking the company’s third major African market. The team hopes that through expanding, more African gig economy workers will be able to enhance their financial security and create their path to financial freedom. ImaliPay workers can now make 3-5 times more thanks to the company’s buy-now-pay-later services.
ImaliPay offers specialized digital financial services to gig economy employees through a one-stop shop, including savings, insurance, and a buy-now-pay-later marketplace where workers can affordably obtain essential tools to do their jobs and earn more revenue. Customers can use ImaliPay to buy key working capital inputs like petrol, smartphones, and airtime when they need them to boost productivity.
“In South Africa alone, there are over four million gig workers,” said Group Partnerships Manager at ImaliPay, Alexandria Akena. “We want to be able to drive more inclusive financial participation for all of them. We are entering South Africa with a robust ecosystem of marketplace vendors that will serve our customers nationwide, and we will be leveraging Stitch as our payments and open banking partner to offer them a seamless payments experience.”
Workers using ImaliPay may effortlessly make payments on the tools they purchased once they start earning revenue thanks to Stitch. Stitch makes it easy for people to pay into ImaliPay by allowing users to link their bank accounts and make payments with a single click.
Kiaan Pillay, co-founder & CEO of Stitch, said, “We’re super excited to be working with the ImaliPay team as they launch in South Africa, and to help them get more money into the hands of the significant gig worker population in this market. Seeing innovative fintech companies like ImaliPay expand to new markets in the matter of weeks and provide compelling products is one of the main reasons we started Stitch.”
ImaliPay is launching in South Africa with a number of vendor partners, initially focused on buy-now-pay-later services, with savings to follow. Gig workers can use ImaliPay to purchase petrol, smartphones, airtime, and other tools through a WhatsApp chatbot. They’ll be given vouchers to utilize at partner vendors to purchase the tools they need.
ImaliPay has powered over 400,000 litres of petrol and enabled over 30 million rides on ride-sharing platforms in Kenya and Nigeria since its launch in 2020. They’ve also made it possible for gig workers to save money and get affordable insurance.
