Rand Mutual Assurance (RMA), which handles workplace injury and disease claims for South Africa’s mining and metals industries, is investigating a claimed data breach. A hacker says it has stolen 1.68 million compensation claim records and is demanding a US$95 000 (R1.6-million) ransom. RMA “has received an alert about a data breach” and “investigations are under…
South Africa’s rand stablecoin issuers want treasury’s rewritten cross-border crypto rules to treat their tokens as payments rather than capital flows, and to let companies use them. Finance minister Enoch Godongwana told parliament on Wednesday that the draft capital flow management regulations, “which included the cross-border treatment of crypto assets”, had drawn thousands of comments…
Hackers are targeting energy and water entities on a more regular basis. (Image made by GenAI) As cyber attacks on water utilities intensify, Rand Water – Africa’s largest bulk water utility – has had its network infiltrated and is still trying to determine the extent of the damage. It is now operating in a disaster…
The rand strengthened on Friday to its firmest level since the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February, but the rally is unlikely to show up on the shelf price of a laptop or a server any time soon. A global shortage of memory and storage chips is doing far more damage to South…
BlockTower, the issuer of the rand-backed stablecoin ZARU, said on Thursday that Luno has listed ZARU/USDT and ZARU/USDC trading pairs on its exchange, putting the rand on a continuous order book against the world’s two largest dollar stablecoins. Three days earlier, national treasury and the South African Reserve Bank published a draft manual that would…
Tether remains the dominant stablecoin in South Africa. (Image created by GenAI) Authorised financial services provider BlockTower’s rand-backed stablecoin ZARU has been listed on Luno Global, in what it says is the first institutional-grade rand stablecoin on a regulated crypto exchange. The listing gives the rand an on-chain secondary market on Luno’s exchange. ZARU, which…
SAMRO ensures composers, authors and publishers are fairly compensated for the use of their musical works. The Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO) has reaffirmed its core mandate of administering and distributing royalties to music creators, announcing total distribution allocation of R630.2 million for the 2025 financial year. The 2025 distribution marks a 1.3% increase…
The rand weakened on Friday, heading for a second consecutive week of losses as surging energy prices fuelled by conflict in the Middle East rattled global markets and heightened inflation concerns. At 10.05am SAST, the rand traded at R16.94/US$, 0.9% weaker than Thursday’s close. The currency has faced sustained pressure since the US-Israeli war on…
The ongoing RAM shortage, driven by suppliers shifting their production lines to higher-margin high-bandwidth memory used for AI workloads in data centres, is already affecting the smartphone market as the Samsung Galaxy S26 launched at prices slightly higher than its predecessor on Wednesday evening. Speaking to TechCentral in a post-launch interview following the Johannesburg leg…
Canal+ expects to generate more than €400-million (R7.5-billion) in annual earnings “synergies” from its acquisition of MultiChoice Group, underlining the strategic importance of Africa to the French media group’s long-term growth ambitions. In a statement released on Thursday, Canal+ said the combined group is targeting run-rate cost synergies of more than €400-million at earnings before…
