Founder Friday: Ubuntu pay

Stokvels have helped South Africans save, invest and support one another for generations. Despite managing billions of rands each year, many groups still rely on manual record-keeping, spreadsheets and messaging platforms to track contributions and savings. Lesley Zibusiso Mncube believes technology can make that process easier without changing the trust and collective spirit that have made stokvels one of the country’s most enduring community financial systems.

Growing up in Tembisa, east of Johannesburg, gave Lesley a front-row seat to the resilience, ambition and resourcefulness that exist within South Africa’s township communities. It was also where he became familiar with the role collective saving plays in everyday life. Those experiences would later inspire the founding of Ubuntu Pay, a platform designed to help stokvels and community finance groups manage their finances more efficiently while preserving the values that have sustained them for decades.

Raised in Tswelopele, Tembisa, Lesley spent much of his early life observing how people around him created opportunities, supported one another and built livelihoods. Over time, those experiences encouraged him to think differently about business, problem-solving and the role he wanted to play in his community.

“I just wanted to be one person who made it on the other side,” he says. “All of us were trying to get by, but I knew there was more to life than simply surviving.” This mindset pushed him towards entrepreneurship long before he understood what entrepreneurship actually was.

The First Business

While still in high school, Lesley used holiday money from his mother to buy T-shirts that he later printed and sold. What started as a simple side hustle soon evolved into graphic design work, creating artwork, posters and branding for local artists and organisations. He built an online presence, developed a portfolio and began learning how businesses operate.

Looking back, he describes it as his first real lesson in building something sustainable.

“I didn’t realise it at the time, but it was actually business,” he says. “I was learning how to create something that could exist beyond me.”

The experience eventually led to corporate work as a graphic designer, where he spent two years learning how businesses operate, building relationships and sharpening his professional skills. Yet even as his career progressed, he found himself thinking about problems closer to home.

Finding the Problem Worth Solving

Lesley initially explored opportunities in the payments space, but quickly realised he would be entering a crowded market filled with established players. Instead, he began looking closer to the communities he knew best and that was community and family.

Family members involved in stokvels were struggling to access records, track contributions and understand what was happening with their savings. Information often sat with a treasurer or committee member, leaving ordinary members dependent on updates and paperwork.

That raised a simple question.

“If this is our money, why can’t we see what’s happening with it in real time?” he recalls.

The answer became Ubuntu Pay.

Digitising a Trusted Community System

For decades, stokvels have helped South Africans save money, pay school fees, fund businesses and support families. Despite managing billions of rands collectively, many groups still rely on notebooks, spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups and manual record-keeping.

Ubuntu Pay aims to make those processes easier without changing the culture behind them.

For Lesley, preserving that culture matters as much as the technology itself.

“Technology should strengthen what already exists,” he says. “Savings have always been part of who we are. Stokvels have helped people build businesses, buy homes and educate their children. We want to support that, not replace it.”

The platform allows groups to track contributions, manage records and gain greater visibility into their finances. According to Lesley, transparency has become one of the strongest drivers of adoption.

Many stokvel members simply want a clearer picture of where their money is, how much has been contributed and what decisions have been made within the group.

Building for Communities

Like many founders, Lesley has faced the challenges that come with introducing new technology to people who are comfortable with existing systems.

The biggest hurdle, he says, has not been the technology itself but helping people understand that there are more convenient ways of managing community finances.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day,” he says. “You have to keep teaching people and showing them that there’s a better way of doing things.”

Today, Ubuntu Pay forms part of a growing wave of South African fintech companies focused on financial inclusion. Yet Lesley sees the company as more than a fintech startup.

His goal is to build tools that help communities create wealth, improve financial management and gain greater control over their economic futures.

Advice for the Next Generation

For young entrepreneurs in townships and underserved communities, Lesley’s advice is straightforward. Start.

“We no longer have to fight for our space,” he says. “If you have a solution, put it out there. You’re going to face challenges, but you’re also going to learn. Just keep building.”

That philosophy has guided his own journey from selling printed T-shirts in Tembisa to building technology for one of South Africa’s most enduring community financial systems.

And for Lesley, the mission remains bigger than software. If communities can build stronger financial foundations together, he believes they can also create opportunities that extend far beyond the township streets where many of those journeys begin.

Read About other Founders HERE