Todi is building Nyuku, a wallet that makes cash digital

Todi is building Nyuku, a digital wallet from Johannesburg for sending money, receiving it and growing it, without the fees and friction that come with moving money today. It's made for everyday South Africans, and for the informal workers who risk being left behind as cash fades out.

It began with two simple questions: why people pay just to live, and why their money gets "heavily taxed by go-betweens just for moving it from point A to point B."

“

"Imagine a digital wallet that actually works for us, instead of treating us like a cash cow for middlemen."

Todi doesn't tell this as a one-person story. Nyuku is "built by a team of builders, engineers, and everyday people who got tired of watching the current financial system quietly siphon value away from us through friction, high fees, and gatekeeping." The wallet is for day-to-day payments, for sending cash without losing too much of it to fees, and for growing wealth together with a community.

Where cash still rules

The clearest place to start is the moment South Africans still reach for cash. Card machines and apps run formal retail, but car guards, petrol attendants and waiters are still tipped in cash. To tip one of them digitally today, "you practically need to ask for their bank account number or swap phone numbers."

Nyuku wants those workers paid instantly, in full, straight to their phones. As Todi sees it, making cash digital isn't about reinventing high finance. It's about that small, everyday moment, and right now "that micro-moment is broken."

Why this team? Because, in Todi's words, "nobody else is solving it for the ground level." Banking apps, Todi says, are built for corporate balance sheets, not for the everyday realities of the street.

That is also why Todi picked the Ubuntu ring: I build with people, for people. For the people using Nyuku, it means they aren't only customers paying fees. They are "active co-builders shaping a tool to solve our shared daily frustrations." Or, as Todi puts it: "If the community doesn't win, the platform doesn't win."

Breaking things safely

The first version of Nyuku is the one people can try now. The team opened it for public testing in late October, which made its early adopters its very first users. It runs entirely on a testnet, a sandbox, before any real money moves.

That choice is about trust. "When you are building a tool to help people control their money, trust is the single most valuable currency you have," Todi says. "The first version looks like a community breaking things safely, so that when we do flip the switch to mainnet, the foundation is bulletproof."

The open ask on the listing is a CASP 1 licence, or a partner who already has one. Todi says the team is working on that in the background, but it isn't the first thing on the whiteboard each morning. The work right now is ironing out the last issues from public testing, so Nyuku can launch on mainnet with confidence.

So the story ends where it began, with an invitation. The testnet is open, and the community is forming.

“

"The only question left is the one we started with: Want to play?"