Serge
Belamant

Serge is the non-executive Chairman, a founder and a director of Zilch.

Serge brings more than three decades of invaluable insights to Zilch in terms of strategic leadership and corporate governance gained from his experience in innovative payment technologies designed to ultimately help deliver social good by facilitating financial inclusion. Serge has created, listed, exited businesses and patented various technological ideas. Zilch benefits from his proven track record of guiding large corporations towards success, listings, heading international boards, as well as the optimal deployment of resources.

Born in France, he grew up in South Africa and went on to work around the world including the USA where he, amongst other projects, developed the COPAC product for Visa. Since the thriving commercialisation of computer science in the 1970s, Serge's experience allowed him to conceptualise and develop the largest ATM switch in the world in the late 80s, become recognised as one of the founders of blockchain technology and go on to create NET 1, a Nasdaq listed payments company that at its peak, was valued in excess of $2 billion. As Chair and CEO of Net1, Serge was the architect of the South African Social Welfare grant payment system that delivered social grants to more than 20 million beneficiaries monthly and minimised fraud and abuse. After retiring from Net1 in 2017, he took an active role in assisting Philip to design, fund and commercialise Zilch and continues to do so in his capacity as Zilch's non-executive Chair.