Building resilient financial infrastructure for modern commerce in South Africa

South African businesses understand resilience in a way few other markets do. Load shedding, unreliable infrastructure and a changing regulatory landscape often test the foundations of commerce businesses. None of the work that goes into optimising product, customer journeys or payment flows matters if money cannot move reliably, or if a parcel never arrives.

Underneath every successfully delivered product or service lies a financial system that has to absorb shocks while still enabling the basics: accepting payments, routing funds, settling to merchants and reconciling cash.

At our recent Scale Summit, we hosted a panel on “Building resilient financial infrastructure for commerce” that brought together Octavius Vermooten, Group CFO at Takealot, and Gregory van Eden, CFO at Superbalist, moderated by Grant James, Sales Director at Stitch. Together, they unpacked how CFOs think about constructing, stress testing and evolving financial systems for modern commerce in South Africa.

Defining resilient financial systems in practice

The panel anchored the discussion in a practical definition of what we mean by a financial system. This is defined as the network of institutions, tools, processes and payment methods that allows a business to move money. For a large online retailer, that network now spans several payment service providers, multiple payment methods, a range of bank accounts and settlement arrangements that are far from uniform.

When Gregory van Eden joined Superbalist, he encountered 12 different payment methods that were supported through eight different PSPs, each with its own integration and operational quirks. The finance operations team responsible for monitoring billions of Rand in flow consisted of a single person. That setup was, unsurprisingly, complex to maintain and confusing for customers to navigate.

His conclusion was blunt: Superbalist is not a payments company, so it should not be trying to behave like one. Resilience meant choosing partners who could aggregate methods, handle more of the operational load and standardise the experience, while allowing Superbalist to focus on retail rather than building and running financial plumbing.

Key takeaways

• Resilient financial infrastructure is built on deliberate choices about what to own in-house and what to delegate to specialist partners.
  
• Complexity in methods and providers often looks like customer choice, but can also introduce operational risk.
  

Accepting that complexity will only increase

At Takealot, Octavius Vermooten’s team has a running joke: that this is the least complex the business will ever be. The number of transactions, vendors, employees and payment methods will only increase over time. Starting from that assumption changes the way the team thinks about systems. Instead of waiting for complexity to become a problem, they design processes that assume continuous growth and change.

Regulation has been a major driver. When Octavius joined, the compliance team was a single person. It is now a dedicated team of five, spanning payments, HR, drivers and marketplace considerations. According to Octavius, the CFO does not need to be a deep expert in every regulatory nuance, but does need a clear view of how evolving rules affect the cost and risk profile of different payment methods – and ultimately the business’s profitability.

He emphasised that not all payment methods are equal. Cash may deliver lower average order values, but can be cheaper on a per-transaction basis than some card or buy now, pay later options. Pay-later products may lift conversion, but they erode margin through higher fees. The CFO’s role is to hold these trade-offs in view and configure the mix accordingly.

Key takeaways

• Complexity is not a temporary spike; it is a permanent feature, and systems should be designed with that in mind.
• The payment mix should be actively managed as a profitability lever, not treated as an afterthought.
  

Payment methods, choice and customer experience

On paper, offering more payment methods appears to be a customer-centric choice. In reality, and at a certain threshold, it can create cognitive overload. Gregory noted that while Superbalist supports more methods than any other e-commerce player in South Africa, the crucial question is whether that matters in the end to customers during checkout.

For many customers, the difference between one Pay by Bank provider and another is negligible. Seeing a lot of options at once may cause hesitation, confusion and ultimately drop-off. That drop-off is not just lost revenue for the retailer – it represents a customer who wanted to complete a purchase and could not, which is a red flag. 

Both panellists championed a more disciplined approach: methods that serve the same need should be consolidated, while new methods should be added only if there is clear evidence that they will open a new demographic, address a specific friction point or meaningfully improve conversion rates.

Key takeaways

• More methods do not automatically equal a better customer experience – they can undermine it if poorly curated.
• Use a more disciplined approach to incorporating new payment methods, assessing whether they’ll meaningfully improve the customer journey.
  

Reconciliation as the backbone of resilience

Reconciliation is often invisible from the outside, but it is the backbone of a resilient financial system. It is where misconfigurations, settlement delays and small systemic errors surface first.

At Superbalist, funds arrive from multiple sources into different bank accounts, on different schedules, and under various routing arrangements. Cash on delivery, card, BNPL and Pay by bank flows are all settled differently. Changes in routing or risk policy can mean that card flows from the same customer segment land in two different banks at the same time. In that environment, reconciliation is a continuous activity rather than a month-end task, managed by a team working around the clock.

Octavius contrasted two views of a “successful” transaction. For an engineer, success is defined by the API response. For an accountant, it is defined by the arrival of funds in the bank account. He highlighted the difficulty of reconciling batched settlements, where banks post net amounts as single lines rather than itemised entries. Gross settlement, with fees handled separately, creates a much clearer one-to-one relationship between internal records and bank statements.

At scale, finance teams become highly sensitive to even small discrepancies. A minor error in a single batch can indicate a structural issue that, when multiplied by millions of transactions, becomes a major problem.

Key takeaways

• Reconciliation is where resilience is either proven or disproven; it must be treated as an always-on discipline, not a periodic chore.
• Settlement structures (gross vs net, cadence, level of detail) materially affect how reliably a business can track and trust its cash position.
  

Automation and AI in financial operations

Both finance leaders see automation and AI as central to making financial systems more resilient and freeing teams to focus on work that requires judgement.

At Superbalist, a single supplier can generate more than a thousand invoices in a month. Historically these were captured manually, invoice by invoice, across a large supplier base. This is a classic case for process automation and, more recently, agentic AI: machines can extract data from documents, post it to accounting systems and route exceptions for human review.

The aim is not to remove people, but to reposition them. Instead of spending most of the month typing data into systems, finance staff can invest time in supplier negotiation, exception analysis and scenario modelling. This shift also improves the quality of subsequent reconciliations, because the underlying data is cleaner and more consistent.

Takealot has followed a similar path with supplier statements and three-way matching. Rather than relying solely on a heavy ERP implementation, they use modern machine learning and image recognition to preserve financial rigour while reducing cost and friction.

Key takeaways

• Automation and AI make it possible to maintain or deepen financial control while significantly reducing manual workload.
• Freeing finance teams from repetitive tasks allows them to play a more strategic, insight-driven role in the business.
  

Omnichannel realities and the role of cash

Although both Takealot and Superbalist are native e-commerce businesses, most payments in South Africa still happen in-person. Omnichannel commerce is therefore not a distant concept, but a daily reality.

Takealot’s long-standing cash on delivery offering is a good example. It is operationally heavier and riskier than fully prepaid flows, yet continues to serve a real customer need where digital trust or card access is constrained. Octavius noted that, when benchmarked against certain non-3D Secure card-not-present transactions, cash can still be cost-effective.

At the same time, his team views tokenised cards and stored payment credentials as the lowest friction experience, particularly at pickup points. Every additional interaction with a driver or terminal introduces a chance of delay or failure. Optimising for resilience often means reducing touchpoints, not adding new ones.

Superbalist approaches omnichannel through returns and fit rather than a physical network of stores. In fashion, the home effectively becomes the fitting room. Free and simple returns are treated as part of the product, backed by tools such as virtual fit finders that approximate the fitting room experience in a digital environment.

Key takeaways

• Omnichannel resilience requires accommodating cash and physical handover, while still pushing towards low-friction, tokenised digital experiences.
• In sectors like apparel, returns and sizing tools function as critical parts of the financial and customer experience infrastructure.
  

Payment innovation: early adopter or fast follower?

The panel also explored how to approach new payment methods in an environment where engineering capacity is finite and margin is tight.

Gregory described Superbalist’s stance as “ready and reactive” rather than aggressively first to market. The business invests in infrastructure that makes it easy to add new methods quickly once the business case is clear. An Apple Pay integration, for example, was completed in a matter of weeks once they had evidence of demand. Time to market mattered more than launching with a perfectly polished solution.

Octavius framed payment innovation through the lens of a finite wallet. Consumers hold spendable funds in bank accounts, alternative wallets, loyalty programmes and credit products. New methods typically repackage how those funds are accessed rather than unlocking entirely new pools of money. This makes return on investment, customer acquisition and demographic fit the key criteria.

In his words, the “box of smarties” of payment methods is already close to full. Crypto may represent one of the remaining frontiers, but for most methods the decision has shifted from novelty to clear, measurable upside.

Key takeaways

• Being future-proofed is less about chasing every new method and more about having foundations that allow rapid, low-friction adoption where justified.
• New payment methods should be evaluated through a disciplined ROI lens, grounded in real customer demand and unit economics.
  

Competition, macro shocks and South African resilience

International e-commerce entrants have changed the competitive dynamics for both Takealot and Superbalist. Campaigns from global players such as Amazon, Temu, and Shein rapidly increased awareness and trial of online purchasing. Gregory pointed out that although the initial surge in spend with certain international platforms has tapered over time, what has remained is greater trust in e-commerce as a whole.

E-commerce penetration in South Africa remains low compared with many markets, but the share of overall retail transacted online has been steadily growing. Local players are benefiting from a “rising tide” as consumers become more comfortable with digital purchasing.

Competition has also forced clearer positioning. Superbalist shifted from a message centred on choice and volume towards one focused on living superb, curation and quality. Takealot has emphasised its identity as a South African company building for South African realities, rather than a purely extractive capital player.

On macro shocks such as COVID, riots, tariffs or load shedding, both panellists suggested a pragmatic stance. Companies cannot control these events, but they can control how they respond. That response depends on having clear internal processes, rapid access to data and a culture that looks for opportunity as well as risk.

Key takeaways

• International competition has increased pressure but also accelerated customer trust in e-commerce, which benefits local players.
• Macro shocks cannot be predicted, but businesses can build repeatable ways of responding that turn disruption into an opportunity to adapt.
  

The evolving role of the finance team

The final part of the discussion focused on how finance functions themselves are changing. At Takealot, areas such as fraud management, reporting and cost allocation have all become more data-rich and tech-enabled. The underlying data structure is strong, even when not fully integrated into a single ERP, which allows finance to deliver granular insight on topics such as drivers of profitability at a particular time and place.

Octavius sees finance as increasingly responsible for enabling better decisions across the organisation, not just for closing the books. That includes challenging plans, testing assumptions and keeping the business accountable for the financial implications of operational choices.

Gregory drew a distinction between “accounting teams” and “finance teams”. Accounting looks backwards, reporting what has already happened. Finance is concerned with how to add value, particularly in organisations where finance is seen as a cost centre. He argued that reporting which is not used for decision-making is a missed opportunity. The goal is to produce information that leaders actively engage with, and to use financial expertise to help steer the business, rather than simply documenting outcomes.

Key takeaways

• Modern finance teams are moving from retrospective reporting to proactive value creation, powered by better data and tooling.
• Resilient financial infrastructure depends as much on how finance operates as it does on the underlying technology.
  

Key takeaways across the panel

Across the conversation, several themes emerged that define what resilient financial infrastructure for commerce looks like in South Africa:

• Own the right things
  Retailers should not behave like payment providers. Delegating complexity to specialist partners, while retaining strategic oversight, is central to resilience.
• Design for permanent complexity
  Payment methods, regulations and transaction volumes will only increase. Systems and teams should be built on the assumption that today is the simplest they will ever be.
• Curate, do not just add, payment methods
  Customer experience at checkout depends on a carefully chosen mix, not sheer quantity. Each method should earn its place.
• Treat reconciliation as core infrastructure
  Continuous, detailed reconciliation and clear settlement structures are non-negotiable for any business handling large transaction volumes.
• Use automation and AI to deepen control
  Automation frees finance teams from manual tasks while improving the timeliness and accuracy of financial data.
• Recognise the realities of omnichannel and cash
  In-person payments and cash remain important in South Africa. Resilient systems accommodate them while still moving towards less friction and more security.
• Approach innovation with discipline
  New methods should be adopted when demand and economics support them, not simply because they are new.
• Build processes to handle shocks
  Macro events will continue to occur. What matters is having a repeatable way to respond, grounded in data, clear roles and a resilient mindset.
• Evolve finance from accounting to partnership
  Finance teams that embrace technology and insight-led decision support become central to building and sustaining resilient financial infrastructure.
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Stitch serves businesses like Superbalist and Takealot with a variety of payment methods, and more importantly, a consultative partnership to ensure their payments stack is the right one for their business, and continues to evolve with the future in mind. We solve for complicated omnichannel payment flows that can disrupt or delay deliveries, and make reconciliation easy to manage from one dashboard.

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