I’ve been meaning to blog about car guards (the South African term for parking attendants) since the first week I moved to Joburg. This line of work is an iconic South African phenomenon. In almost every busy street and parking lot in South Africa, you’ll find people in Day-Glo vests directing cars in and out of parking spots and keeping an eye on parked cars while their owners are away. In return for this service, drivers (hopefully) tip car guards a few rands before driving off.

Eddy Diba works at the Nine Yards retail complex in Parkwood. Before fleeing the Democratic Republic of Congo almost 20 years ago, Eddy was a teacher of history and geography. In South Africa, he works 12-hour days as a car guard in one of Joburg’s busiest parking lots. Eddy, 52, is married with four children.

As a foreigner from a country where tipping is a huge part of the culture, I’ve always been fascinated by South African car-guarding. And as someone who dreads reversing out of tight parking spots, I’m grateful for the assistance these attendants provide. But being a car guard is grueling — a last resort for those hustling to make a living in a country with sky-high unemployment and inequality. Car guards work long hours on their feet, rain or shine, and they usually depend 100% on tips. They often have to pay landlords or security companies a daily rate for the privilege of guarding a specified number of spaces. Most difficult of all, the car guards’ potential customers usually carry very little cash, if any.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked back to my car after shopping, unzipped my wallet, and discovered with chagrin that I have only R200 notes and/or a few 10- or 20-cent coins. Sometimes I go back inside to buy something in cash, if I have any, to get change. Sometimes I ask the car guard if he has change for a larger bill (which they often do, by the way). Other times I just pull out, apologize meekly, and drive off.

On a good day, an experienced car guard working in a busy lot might make R400 (about $25). But usually it’s far less.

For all of these reasons, I was really excited to find out about Tip4Change, a South African company that has created an innovative system to help car guards, petrol attendants, and others who depend on tips to collect cashless payments. Tip4Change started in Cape Town but recently expanded into Joburg, and I don’t think many people know about it yet. So I’m devoting this post to telling you all about how Tip4Change works and how you can use it as both a giver and receiver.

How Tip4Change Works

Tip4Change connects workers in the informal economy with a payment system that allows the workers to receive cashless tips. Workers don’t need a card machine or even a smart phone; all they need is a Tip4Change name tag with a QR code, which customers can scan and send a tip instantly via SnapScan, Zapper, or the QR code feature in their South African banking app.

My banking app has a clickable QR code feature in the far top-right corner. I personally use Zapper though.

The tips accumulate in an ewallet, which workers can use to withdraw or transfer money to their own bank account using a variety of methods.

The Tip4Change website is designed specifically to make it easy for workers to sign up for the program. There is no charge to sign up — all the worker needs to do is fill out a short online form with their name, ID/passport number, and where they work, upload a photo, and subsequently reply to an SMS.

Tip4Change then delivers the person’s card, with their name, photo, and QR code, for free. Tip4Change charges workers a 10% platform and processing fee (which pays for the operation of the company), and workers pay a small bank transaction fee (which varies depending on the bank and transaction) to transfer or withdraw their money. There are several videos about how the system works, for both workers and customers, on the Tip4Change website.

To participate in Tip4Change, all Eddy needs is this card, which has a Zapper QR code on one side and a SnapScan QR code on the other. (I think either code will work using the banking app QR code feature.)

The benefits of this system are obvious. First and foremost: Drivers who don’t carry cash, who previously had no way to tip a car guard or petrol attendant, are able to do so. Second, cashless payments are safe and secure, minimizing the risk to workers who previously had to carry all their income in cash. (The QR code payments are also totally safe for customers, since Tip4Change partners only with trusted platforms — Zapper, SnapScan, and big banks — which invest heavily in fraud protection.) Third, customers tipping by card are likely to tip more — I know I was. My normal cash tip amount for a car guard is R5, simply because that’s the denomination of the largest coin. But when tapping the QR code with my phone, it felt stingy to tip less than R10.

Lastly, I think the Tip4Change card lends an air of legitimacy to the person wearing it. Seeing the card with the worker’s photo and name printed on it is a reminder that this is a real human being, working a real job, who deserves to be paid.

Isaace Kalengo, another car guard at Nine Yards. All of the attendants who work there have a Tip4Change card.

I recently went to Nine Yards, one of the places where Tip4Change has rolled out in Joburg, to speak to a couple of car guards and try out the payment system for myself. Nine Yards is extremely busy and legendary for its shortage of parking; the car guards there work exceptionally hard.

Eddy doing his thing at Nine Yards. While interviewing Eddy, I realized that our paths have crossed previously. Before coming to Nine Yards in June, Eddy worked at the old Melville Spar (RIP) and later at the Rand Steam shopping center.

The guards I spoke to started using Tip4Change when it was rolled out at Nine Yards in June. They were all happy to have this option as a way to receive tips from customers who don’t have cash. But I sensed that the program hasn’t really taken off, possibly because customers aren’t aware of it or don’t understand/trust the system yet.

I’m here to tell you the system works. To tip, I simply opened Zapper, scanned the car guard’s QR code, and my phone immediately brought up a screen where I could type an amount. I entered the amount I wanted to tip, punched in my pin, and that was it — I immediately received a notification of my payment. For a visual demonstration of how to tip using Tip4Change, including a screen recording, see this video I posted on Instagram.

It was so easy and fun that I tipped three of the Nine Yards car guards, just for kicks.

George, the car guard who actually watched my car at Nine Yards. I tipped him too, obviously.

In addition to Nine Yards, Tip4Change is up and running in a few other Joburg neighborhoods, like Linden and Parkhurst. But I would love to see it in all of my regular haunts, and I plan to talk about it to all of my favorite car guards. I hope you will, too. If you’d like to bring Tip4Change to the informal workers in your area, please email don@tip4change.co.za. And if you don’t carry cash (who does anymore?), please keep an eye out for the Tip4Change QR code before driving off without tipping.

Thanks to Eddy and the other guys at Nine Yards for taking time out of their busy day to talk to me.

This post is a paid collaboration between 2Summers and Tip4Change. Opinions expressed are mine.