When you think pre-paid, you think Vodacom, MTN or Telkom, when you should be thinking Blue Label Telecoms. The company has cornered the telecoms, electricity and services pre-paid market, despite insider trading allegations, a dropping share price and an ambitious, and some say, unsustainable business model.

Originally founded as Blue Label Investments, it realised eight years ago that offering products and services to the largely unbanked sector might just fill a massive, empty hole in the market. After all, dealing in cash is not about value, but volume. And cash is still king: even when there was a great credit cycle, as much as 80 percent of transactions around the world were conducted in cash. The downside is that dealing in cash is a laborious task, creating unnecessary collection and processing headaches.