wiGroup takes top honours in PWC’s ‘Local to Global’ expo

Cape Town headquartered mobile transaction company wiGroup has taken top honours at the PwC Accelerator ‘Local to Global’ expo, beating out nine other tech companies from around the world. The award was announced in Luxembourg after the ten participating companies presented their solutions to a panel of independent international judges.

“The programme has brought together extraordinary people from around the world, and the strategic advice, knowledge sharing and general belief in building global businesses has been inspiring,” says wiGroup CEO Bevan Ducasse. “It is the perfect way to end a near perfect year for us.”

Ducasse, who co-founded the company in 2007, was also selected as one of only 29 high impact entrepreneurs globally to be accepted to the Endeavor program and was chosen as this year’s inaugural Under 35 Maverick Award winner. 2014 has also been a landmark year for wiGroup: the company won the Best Alternative Payments Platform award at the Card and ePayments Africa Awards, the Maverick Award for Technology Innovation, and the Premier’s Recognition for Excellence in Entrepreneurship at the recent PERA Dinner.

The company’s flagship offering, wiPlatform, enables retailers to take advantage of game changing mobile transaction services and apps at their point of sale through a single integration. The response has been remarkable.

Today, wiPlatform is live in over 50,000 till lanes across the country and is set to cross the R3bn threshold in transaction value in the next few weeks. wiGroup counts two of Africa’s largest retailers (Shoprite Group and Pick n Pay Group), two of the continent’s largest network operators (MTN and Vodacom), a number of national restaurant and hospitality chains including KFC, Primi Piatti and Col’Cacchio and some of the country’s largest brands (Unilever, SAB, brandhouse and P&G) amongst their extensive client list.

Ducasse is upbeat about the company’s future. “We will continue to focus on growing our footprint in South Africa by rolling out wiPlatform to even more retail till lanes. We are also very excited to expand to the international stage, where huge untapped opportunities for growth exist. We look forward to working with all our retail, brand and agency partners to make 2015 another landmark year for mobile transacting.”