A financial technology startup founded by former Capitec credit executive Jaco Carstens is building digital property records for millions of South African homes that currently lack official title deeds. Operating under the name DigiDeeds, the platform aims to monetize structured community data by providing banks, credit bureaus, and insurers with verified demographic and structural records for households operating within the informal economy.
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The scale of South Africa’s undocumented property market is substantial. Industry research indicates that out of 17.8 million residential properties in South Africa, only 6.9 million possess registered title deeds. This leaves an estimated 35 million individuals residing in informal dwellings, government-subsidized RDP houses, backyard rooms, and communal rural lands without official ownership documentation or simple proof of address.
DigiDeeds addresses this challenge through a multi-tier mobile verification framework:
- Identity & Location Tracking: Users capture a selfie, scan their official identification document, and drop a precise GPS pin on their residence linked to high-resolution geographic information system (GIS) mapping.
- Neighbourhood Consensus: Seven physical neighbours must independently confirm the user’s location, occupancy status, and structural ownership claim, creating a digitally verifiable record grounded in legal principles of community recognition.
- Proof of Address Alternative: The generated digital certificate serves as a functional proof of residency, eliminating the time and travel expenses traditionally required to obtain ward councillor letters.
While the service remains completely free for members, DigiDeeds generates revenue by enriching raw GIS mapping data with member-supplied insights. This aggregated intelligence is packaged into alternative data feeds for financial institutions seeking compliance with Financial Intelligence Centre Act (Fica) requirements and looking to improve credit-scoring accuracy for previously unbanked populations.
To date, the platform has registered more than 6,600 members across major townships including Khayelitsha, Soweto, and Soshanguve, accumulating over 200,000 unique data points and 40,000 neighbourhood verifications. The system also calculates a dynamic stability score ranging from 0 to 100 based on residence duration and community confirmations.
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Three major South African retail banks and three leading credit bureaus have already acquired the data sets for testing under non-disclosure agreements. Furthermore, DigiDeeds enables members to pledge their digital ownership certificates to lenders as collateral via legal cession.
To protect sensitive user data, the platform’s infrastructure relies on graph database technology engineered by Stellenbosch software firms Octoco and Polymorph, maintaining strict compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia).
Led by Carstens alongside co-founder Charles Robertson and chairman Ruben Richards, DigiDeeds aims to scale its user base to 125,000 members over the next year, targeting an operational break-even threshold of 500,000 users. Future development plans include expanding verified marketplace offerings, such as solar installations, home connectivity, and private security, to registered members, alongside prospective international expansions into regional African markets.
