Mobile payments is a big theme and it's also the biggest opportunity in the fintech market. Secondly, there’s still a big theme around remittances, whether in-country or cross-border and thirdly is the smart-funding domain. 

In some cases it's disrupting the incumbents with their own services and helping them become more efficient at what they're doing and helping them reach a broader market. . But in other cases, it could be completely disruptive because basically new technologies and new ways of doing things help incumbents come in and take market share or address a completely new market.

Where fintech has disrupted the most is payments, It's also the biggest opportunity because of how much cash gets moved around and how frictionless it's becoming with mobile payments, whether it is integrating NFC and using ApplePay or GooglePay, or Zapper, SnapScan, QR-code-based payments or even more closed-loop digital-type wallet solutions.

Access to regulators, access to networks, access to other entrepreneurs - all of these things have been challenges but are slowly but surely improving.

If you're in banking, there's a banking act. If you’re in insurance there’s an insurance act. If you're in funding, there's the National Credit Act. You've got to look at what's relevant for the vertical that you're in and get your head around what compliance means in that situation.

The essentials are awareness and trust. Once you've got the trust right and start building on it, the brand becomes quite pervasive. If you look at the iKhokhas and the Yocos of this world, they've kind of got it right now - but it's taken 10 years. Then there's all the regulatory complications that come with it that you've got to stand up to, otherwise you're not going to be allowed to trade.

The advice I would always give anyone looking for money is try and get as little money from an investor, particularly an equity investor, as possible because that's expensive. You're giving away equity in your business. First try and find any other means of raising the money. 

Whoever you approach needs to understand that however you're going to take that product to market, people are going to pay for it and they're going to pay enough based on what it's going to cost you to operate and run the business for it to be a success. 

I don't think there's any successful entrepreneur that isn't a good salesperson. If you can't sell yourself, if you can't sell what you're trying to achieve, no investor is going to back you, no team member is going to come and want to work for you, and if you don't have investors or funders or a team working for you, you're on your own. So you've got to start there.

The trick is to make sure that the partnership is right, because your incumbent is always going to protect themselves with certain terms of exclusivity and other things. You just have to make sure that that doesn't kill the rest of your business and where you want to grow going forward, and that it's not too restrictive.