Forget Apple Pay and Google Wallet. In Africa, rather than trying to reinvent the payment wheel, mobile payments players are focused on building African solutions for African problems – and South Africa’s fertile digital landscape means it’s in a prime position to crack new ground.

According to the new Digital Evolution Index by MasterCard and The Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts, the country’s digital economy is not only the most developed in Africa, it’s one of the fastest growing in the world.