The Direct Pay Online (DPO) Group has announced that its managing director, Peter Harvey, will be leaving the organisation at the end of February 2022. Harvey founded PayGate in 1999 as a two-person start-up and then managed the company’s mergers with the DPO group and PayFast in 2016 and 2019.
“From a two-man start-up in 1999, to being part of a London Stock Exchange-listed business in 2021, with over 400 employees — it took us 20 years to become an overnight success,” Harvey said.
“In the beginning, most companies couldn’t see the value of ecommerce or the impact it would have, but we persevered and believed in our mission, and that has made all the difference.” Harvey’s ecommerce journey began when he worked as an IT consultant in the mail order business in the late 1990s.
He wrote an automated interface for the company to process batches of transactions automatically rather than manually with a swipe machine.
“I knew that automation could help other businesses streamline their payments, and this became the catalyst for the founding of PayGate at the end of the decade.
“The biggest frustration in those early days was knowing that ecommerce was going to be huge, and having to wait for the momentum to pick up,” he added. Seventeen years later, Paygate merged with the DPO Group, stating that it realised that it needed to invest in a Pan-African approach to impact the market.
“The potential for Africa to perform on a global scale is massive. The African continent has punched well below its weight for a long time,” Harvey stated.
“Seeing Africa wake up and realise we can do this and that we’re a meaningful player in the global economy, with resources that no one else has, has been my favourite part of the journey. Harvey also explained how critical the merger with the DPO Group was for the ecommerce industry in Africa.
“This was one of the best things we could have done as a company. The merger attracted international interest in Africa’s growing ecommerce industry and ultimately led to the acquisition by Network international,” he said.
“Working together, DPO Group and Network International have the geography and resources to do something really special in Africa – and that has been the goal from the beginning,” he added.
Source: mybroadband
In other news – Kelly Khumalo threatens to continue singing Gospel n@ked
Haters just can’t stop harassing Kelly Khumalo. Social media users were left upset when she recently posted a video of herself singing her gospel song, Esphambanweni, wearing just a bodysuit.
The video, shared on Facebook and Twitter, angered many Christians, who said she was dressed inappropriately for someone singing a gospel song. Learn more
