Focus Track
FinTech
Banking, payments, and risk in the South African context—building trustworthy digital finance from campus to production.
A Brief SA Timeline
1800s
Early commercial banks emerge in SA.
1900s
Branch networks expand; cheque and cash dominant.
2000s
Online and mobile banking roll out widely.
2010s
Card and POS growth; QR and app payments appear.
2020s
Digital-first experiences, instant payments, open APIs.
Big 5 banks in SA: Standard Bank, Absa, FirstRand (FNB), Nedbank, Capitec.
Payments
- Cards & EFT: EMV cards, 3-D Secure, and traditional EFT rails for bill pay and salaries.
- Instant Payments: Faster settlement options; monitor risk and limits to reduce fraud.
- Interoperability: QR schemes, bank transfers, cards, and wallets should work across providers.
- Fraud & AML: Detect anomalies, block risky flows, and keep audit trails.
Regulation (High Level)
- • PCI DSS concepts for handling card data securely.
- • KYC/AML concepts to verify users and monitor transactions.
- • Do not give legal advice; partner with compliance when in doubt.
Security in FinTech
- • Tokenization for cards and sensitive identifiers.
- • Least privilege: scoped credentials, short-lived tokens.
- • Audit trails: capture who did what, when, and from where.
- • Segregate environments; monitor anomalies and alerts.
SA Reality
- • High mobile banking adoption; card and QR payments widely used.
- • Remittances and cross-border needs for families and students.
- • Latency matters: local hosting improves app performance.
- • Fraud patterns: phishing, SIM swaps, social engineering.
Tools & Architecture
- • APIs and OAuth for secure access to accounts and data
- • Event-driven systems and Kafka for payment flows
- • Encryption basics: in transit (TLS) and at rest
- • Cloud platforms with observability and autoscaling
- • Automation: GitHub Actions/CI for testing and deploys
- • Observability: tracing, metrics, and alerting for payment flows.
Payments Reconciliation Interoperability Trust Identity