Paul Kent (Adumo): Transforming South Africa's Payments Landscape.

The Startup Club Podcast

In this episode, we're thrilled to sit down with Paul Kent, Founder and CEO of adumo, the multi-channel payments platform that's helping businesses get paid, boost their customer engagement and keep employees motivated.

The last two decades have seen a radical transformation in South Africa’s payments landscape, evolving from predominantly cash-heavy commerce to a world that's embracing digital infrastructure. The space is both diverse and dynamic, with a mix of traditional banking systems, mobile payment platforms, challenger POS brands and a growing consumer appetite for fintech solutions.
Having built one of the country’s first non-bank card payments businesses, SureSwipe, Paul Kent has witnessed this payments revolution first-hand. Over a decade later, his experience culminated in the founding of Adumo in 2019, which has since grown to serve more than 23 000 active merchants and process over R100-billion in throughput across channels annually. Earlier this month, Adumo received approval from the country's Competition Commission to be fully acquired by listed financial services group, Lesaka Technologies, in a R1.6bn cash/equity deal. For Paul and the Adumo team though, the opportunity remains greater than ever.

We talk about:
• Paul's upbringing, early career and juggling talent over passion.
• Leaning in when opportunity knocks.
• Lessons from building multiple ventures in a competitive space.
• The founder journey from start to acquisition.
• What's next for Paul and the Adumo team.
-
Connect with Paul: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulkentsa/
Connect with Mathew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathewmarsden/
This episode was brought to you in partnership with Guardrisk Launchpad - a pioneering initiative that's driving insure-tech innovation through capital and value-added support services to qualifying scaleups. Learn more at the halfway mark of today’s episode - or visit https://grlaunchpad.com.

The Startup Club Podcast dives into the stories of South Africa's leading tech startup founders and investors, their journeys of innovation, failure, resilience, and triumph and is an initiative of Startup Club ZA - the country’s fastest-growing tech startup and investor community. If you're passionate about entrepreneurship, innovation, solving hard problems, backing the change-makers and co-creating a better country, then you're invited to join us! 🇿🇦
Connect with us:
Website - https://www.startupclubza.com
LinkedIn - https://za.linkedin.com/company/startup-club-za
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/startupclub.za/

Chapters

1. Paul Kent (Adumo): Transforming South Africa's Payments Landscape. (00:00:00)

2. A word from today's episode partners, Guardrisk Launchpad. (00:39:51)