South African inventor and investor Stafford Masie on the economy that will unfold as a result of bitcoin offering greater capability than cash.

South African technology entrepreneur and artificial intelligence (AI) enthusiast Stafford Masie has headed Google in South Africa, invented Payment Pebble (a payment solution), and has had over 20 years in IT. At a recent lecture to engineering students at the University of Johannesburg, Masie said: “The future is already here. It is just unevenly distributed.” He also spoke to FORBES AFRICA on the tech forecast for 2019.
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AI gone rogue
Almost all industries have been impacted by AI and Masie believes it has potential to lose control.
“AI is the difference between the third and fourth industrial revolution. We now have this algorithm in the world that says we should measure companies by output so companies are trying to do more with less. [Companies are thinking] ‘get rid of the humans and let’s build automation and we increase our operating margin and our share price goes up’. That is not sustainable. That’s the world in which we find ourselves today. AI has already gone rogue. There is no expert of AI in the entire world. It’s still very early.”
Masie says should be seen as plural and not singular.
“Take a look at Uber. It’s a coalition of disparate AIs and a dual special awareness of intelligence. It’s intelligence on the phone, it’s intelligence in the car, it’s all of those things coming together to deliver on that service. That’s AIs, not an AI.
“AI does not need to take away jobs. AI is makes us look in the mirror and ask, ‘should we be doing that work?’ I don’t think we should. I think we have a higher purpose. We need to start rethinking this notion of employment and jobs and start thinking about work. Humans should be released from doing what they are doing today. A job that measures efficiency and productivity will ultimately be taken over by robots…We were not meant to do jobs that measure efficiency and productivity. We were meant to be [creative]. We need to allow humans to have a purpose.”
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Bitcoin will unlock the third economy
Despite experts predicting the fall of Bitcoin and its technologies, Masie predicts otherwise.
“The Bitcoin world is going to be interesting to watch over the next year. That’s very exciting. I just think because it’s still so infantile, it’s still so small. I think Bitcoin wasn’t built for the people who are actually using it today. It was built for the people not financially included in the world today. And what’s exciting in the next few years is to see those people being unlocked and emerging. We have the formal economy, then we have the informal economy. The formal economy has all the financial instruments that you and I use. The security, the credit cards, the bank accounts etc. Then you get the formal economy which is cash.
“But I think bitcoin is going to establish a third economy, and that third economy will surface new transaction types, new value exchange instruments that we still haven’t imagined today and that will come to the fore.
“What excites me more is this third economy that will emerge because Bitcoin offers greater capability than cash. You can program your money. You can expand it, you can create contracts around it. You can exchange value without a third party and that’s what am very excited to see within the next 12 to 24 months, that’s really big for me.”
The tech smoothie
“I’m excited to see what will happen in retail over the next four months. That’s the big one. I can feel it in the water. All the retailers are looking immensely at investing in technology, better customer service, optimization and then there’s logistics in the supply chains driving down production costs, doing more with the humans that they have, sweating their assets, etc. In retail, when you start mixing up the Internet of Things, AI and Bitcoin, that little smoothie looks very interesting to me.”

Stafford-Masie_KM

The Third Economy?

Stafford Masie brought Google to South Africa and paid a hefty price. With 20 years in IT, Masie worked with some of the biggest names in the industry. And if ever you want insight into his tenacity, you have to go back to Bloemfontein in the 1990s.
“When I came back to South Africa, I worked at Telkom as a network analyst. I then became an instructor; they sent me to Cape Town and Durban to do a training course and then they sent me to Bloemfontein. It was a five-day course; I was prepared to do it and then these white guys walked in, asked if I was the instructor and walked out. They refused to be taught by someone of color. I was confused and angry; I didn’t know what to do. A lady came to me and said ‘look this is the situation, we are dealing with it, please go back to your hotel’. So I went back to my hotel distraught. I remember calling my dad and he said ‘You have to choose between two paths, you could be the victim or you could go back in there tomorrow morning and make sure you are the best of the best,’” says Masie.
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“I went back in and today some of those guys are my best friends.”
By 2006, Masie had traveled and lived abroad, and held one of the top positions at his then company Novell SA. His success, however, kept him away from his wife and children. Just when Masie thought it was time to rekindle his relationship with his family, he was given the biggest opportunity in his career – Google SA. Stafford did it all; he developed Google Search, Maps, Street View and he hired staff.
It was three years too many for his family and his personal life ‘hit the wall’. Masie was forced to leave Google SA to spend time with his crumbling family.
“I left Google reluctantly, I left Google negatively, I left Google unwillingly, I was hoping to salvage a marriage and spend time with my children again,” says Masie.
But it was too little, too late. His marriage ended.
“I got lost over all the years of giving so much to my career. I lost family and a marriage.”
Masie, the husband, lost, but Masie, the entrepreneur, was determined to win. He threw himself into his work. Masie sent shockwaves through the payment space, creating Payment Pebble, a device that turns your smartphone or tablet into a mobile card machine to receive credit or debit card payments on the go. It was a world first through his founding company, Thumbzup, founded in 2010.
“I have the greatest team, that’s what I have. So whatever anyone else is building out there, I don’t care. I’m not building a product to compete, I am building a team to be sustainable,” says Masie.
The idea of Payment Pebble came to Masie in an unexpected way that he will never forget. While waiting to see a mayor in the Gauteng province, a woman with a baby strapped to her back with a towel was rushed into the mayor’s office in tears. Stafford asked the receptionist what was going on, she explained that the council had turned off the woman’s utilities because she hadn’t made payments. The woman had the money, but wasn’t able to make the payments because she had just given birth to twins and fell ill during childbirth. With no lights or water in the middle of winter, one of the twins died.
Masie knew he had to do something.
“The Payment Pebble wasn’t a technological thing; my love for IT is personified by this. IT can solve that woman’s problem. That guy could have showed up at her house, if he had a payment pebble, he could have accepted her card payment and there could have been a full reconciliation of payment. He would have left and not switched off the lights and the child would be alive today,” says Masie.
“The Payment Pebble is a good example of African innovation solving African problems, it’s a great product,” says Mark Walker, the Regional Director for Africa at the Industrial Development Corporation.
Stafford took his idea to the banks.
“We spoke to all the banks and we realized that all the banks wanted a product. What we liked about Absa was that they wanted a partnership,” says Masie.
Four years later, the Payment Pebble is the largest mobile point of sale in Africa and is launching in one of the largest financial institutes in Australia and Latin America.
Masie believes his leadership style is the reason for his success as an entrepreneur.
“First of all, I am not a boss. I think I am more a leader, someone who is in the trenches shooting with the soldiers. Even though I may be a higher rank, I am in there with them. It is the only way I can be,” says Masie.
Lydia Paledi, an office manager at Novell SA, worked under Masie during his time at the company and has high praise for the entrepreneur.
“He was the best boss I’ve ever had and I wish he could come back.”
Despite his success, Masie dwells on his mistakes. He admits that he thinks of quitting at least once a day.
“It’s a constant battle with yourself; when you invent something, it’s nice to see it on billboards. When you pass Melrose Arch there is this massive billboard, when you look on the TV, it’s on CNN. It’s an incredible feeling but it’s short lived. You are always looking for the next big thing,”
he says.
Masie’s dream was to become a rescue helicopter pilot. Even though that didn’t happen, he is settled with his Payment Pebble and his microlight and six-seater Jabiru planes that he flies privately.

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