Cash In, Cash Out

Book excerpt: " It is 1999. Mobile phones are gaining global traction, particularly in emerging markets. Yet payments look set to remain a traditional banking stronghold, keeping the unbanked exiled to the margins of the cash economy. Out of the blue, an unusual directive is issued to Hannes van Rensburg, unsuspecting CIO of a large South African financial services company: walk away from a promising career, and start something - anything - new. An industry's time had come: with abundant resourcefulness, the mindset of a maverick and the support of a deeply committed core of key players who shared his abiding vision, Van Rensburg founded Fundamo, a mobile banking start-up that foresaw the spectacular chemistry lying dormant between mobile-phone technology and financial services. But the pioneer's way is seldom clear. Funding constraints, resistance to innovation and infrastructural challenges were to stand in the path of this unprecedented movement to bring financial services to the markets that mainstream banking had forgotten - obstacles that the Fundamo vision was to level, creatively yet relentlessly, in its quest to improve lives. From Kinshasa to Karachi and India to Iraq, from remote rural villages to the bright lights of some of the world\2019s slickest conferences, from beers overlooking the Lusaka InterContinental's unlikely crocodile-stocked Koi pond to pre-dawn single-malts with Mark Shuttleworth high in the Swiss Alps, Cash In, Cash Out tracks the stellar growth of one of Africa\2019s most successful tech start-ups, culminating in its 2011 acquisition by financial services giant Visa Inc. While it shares a wealth of knowledge for the entrepreneur, it is, first and foremost, a uniquely humanising, compelling and inspiring story about perseverance in the face of mighty personal and professional odds."--Back cover.