LESAKA TECHNOLOGIES INC - Annual Report: 2017 (Form 10-K)

UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

[ X ]  ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2017

or

[   ] TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934

For the transition period from                    to

Commission file number: 000-31203

NET 1 UEPS TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

President Place, 4^th Floor, Cnr. Jan Smuts Avenue and Bolton Road
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
(Address of principal executive offices)

Registrant’s telephone number, including area code: 27-11-343-2000

Securities registered pursuant to section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to section 12(g) of the Act:
None

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.
Yes [   ] No [X]

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act.
Yes [   ] No [X]

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filings requirements for the past 90 days.
Yes [X] No [   ]

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically and posted on its corporate Web site, if any, every Interactive Data File required to be submitted and posted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit and post such files).
Yes [X] No [   ]

Indicate by check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K (§229.405) is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrant’s knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. [   ]

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act (Check one):

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act.
Yes [   ] No [X]

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).
Yes [   ] No [X]

The aggregate market value of the registrant’s common stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant as of December 31, 2016 (the last business day of the registrant’s most recently completed second fiscal quarter), based upon the closing price of the common stock as reported by The Nasdaq Global Select Market on such date, was $279,962,886. This calculation does not reflect a determination that persons are affiliates for any other purposes.

As of August 21, 2017, 56,343,902 shares of the registrant’s common stock, par value $0.001 per share were outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Certain portions of the definitive Proxy Statement for our 2017 Annual Meeting of Shareholders are incorporated by reference into Part III of this Form 10-K.

NET 1 UEPS TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

INDEX TO ANNUAL REPORT ON FORM 10-K
Year Ended June 30, 2017

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PART I

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

In addition to historical information, this Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those projected, anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in Item 1A—“Risk Factors.” In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “would,” “expects,” “plans,” “intends,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of such terms and other comparable terminology. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this Annual Report. We undertake no obligation to release publicly any revisions to the forward-looking statements after the date of this Annual Report. You should carefully review the risk factors described in other documents we file from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q to be filed by us during our 2018 fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018.

Overview

We are a leading provider of payment solutions, transaction processing services and financial technology across multiple industries and in a number of emerging and developed economies.

We have developed and market a comprehensive transaction processing solution that encompasses our smart card-based alternative payment system for the unbanked and under-banked populations of developing economies and for mobile transaction channels. Our market-leading system can enable the billions of people globally who generally have limited or no access to a bank account to enter affordably into electronic transactions with each other, government agencies, employers, merchants and other financial service providers. Our universal electronic payment system, or UEPS, and UEPS/EMV derivative discussed below, uses biometrically secure smart cards that operate in real-time but offline, unlike traditional payment systems offered by major banking institutions that require immediate access through a communications network to a centralized computer. This offline capability means that users of our system can conduct transactions at any time with other card holders in even the most remote areas so long as a smart card reader, which is often portable and battery powered, is available. Our off-line systems also offer the highest level of availability and affordability by removing any elements that are costly and are prone to outages. Our latest version of the UEPS technology has been certified by the EuroPay, MasterCard and Visa global standard, or EMV, which facilitates our traditionally proprietary UEPS system to interoperate with the global EMV standard and allows card holders to transact at any EMV-enabled point of sale terminal or automated teller machine, ATM. The UEPS/EMV technology has been deployed on an extensive scale in South Africa through the issuance of MasterCard-branded UEPS/EMV cards to our social welfare grant customers. In addition to effecting purchases, cash-backs and any form of payment, our system can be used for banking, healthcare management, international money transfers, voting and identification.

We also provide secure financial technology solutions and services, by offering transaction processing, financial and clinical risk management solutions to various industries. We have extensive expertise in secure online transaction processing, cryptography, mobile telephony, integrated circuit card (chip/smart card) technologies, and the design and provision of financial and value-added services to our cardholder base.

Our technology is widely used in South Africa today, where we distribute pension and welfare payments, using our biometrically enabled UEPS/EMV technology, to over ten million recipient cardholders across the entire country, process debit and credit card payment transactions on behalf of a wide range of retailers through our EasyPay system, process value-added services such as bill payments and prepaid airtime and electricity for the major bill issuers and local councils in South Africa, and provide mobile telephone top-up transactions for all of the South African mobile carriers. We are the largest provider of third-party and associated payroll payments in South Africa through our FIHRST service. We provide financial inclusion services such as microloans, insurance, mobile transacting and prepaid utilities to our cardholder base.

In addition, through KSNET, we are one of the top three value-added network, or VAN, processors in South Korea, and we offer card processing, payment gateway and banking value-added services in that country. We have expanded our card issuing and acquiring capabilities through the acquisition of Transact24 in Hong Kong. Our Masterpayment subsidiary in Germany provides value added payment services and working capital finance to online retailers across Europe. Our XeoHealth service provides funders and providers of healthcare in United States with an on-line real-time management system for healthcare transactions.

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Our Net1 Solutions business unit is responsible for the worldwide technical development and commercialization of our array of web and mobile applications and payment technologies, such as Mobile Virtual Card, or MVC, Chip and GSM licensing and Virtual Top Up, or VTU, and has deployed solutions in many countries, including South Africa, the United Kingdom, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi, Cameroon, the Philippines, India and Colombia.

All references to “the Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our” are references to Net 1 UEPS Technologies, Inc. and its consolidated subsidiaries, collectively, and all references to “Net1” are to Net 1 UEPS Technologies, Inc. only, except as otherwise indicated or where the context indicates otherwise.

Market Opportunity

Services for the under-banked: According to the latest World Bank’s Global Findex Database, 62% of adults worldwide have a bank account. As a result, two billion adults around the world remain entirely excluded from the financial system. This situation arises when banking fees are either too high relative to an individual’s income, a bank account provides little or no meaningful benefit or there is insufficient infrastructure to provide financial services economically in the individual’s geographic location. We refer to these people as the unbanked and the under-banked. These individuals typically receive wages, welfare benefits, money transfers or loans in the form of cash, and conduct commercial transactions, including the purchase of food and clothing, in cash.

The use of cash, however, presents significant risks. In the case of recipient cardholders, they generally have no secure way of protecting their cash other than by converting it immediately into goods, carrying it with them or hiding it. In cases where an individual has access to a bank account, the typical deposit, withdrawal and account fees meaningfully reduce the money available to meet basic needs. For government agencies and employers, using cash to pay welfare benefits or wages results in significant expense due to the logistics of obtaining that cash, moving it to distribution points and protecting it from theft.

Our target under-banked customer base in most emerging economies, and particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, has limited access to formal financial services and therefore relies heavily on the unregulated informal sector for such services. By leveraging our smart card and mobile technologies, we are able to offer affordable, secure and reliable financial services such as transacting accounts, loans and insurance products to these consumers and alleviate some of the challenges they face in dealing with the informal sector.

With over 30 million cards issued in more than ten developing countries around the world, our track record and scale uniquely positions us to continue further geographical penetration of our technology in additional emerging countries.

Online transaction processing services: The continued global growth of retail credit and debit card transactions is reflected in the May 2017 Nilson Report, according to which worldwide annual general purpose card dollar volume increased 6.4% to $26 trillion in 2016, while transaction volume increased by 13.3% to 257 billion transactions and cards issued increased by 9.4% to 11.15 billion cards during the same period. General purpose cards include the major card network brands such as MasterCard, Visa, UnionPay and American Express. In South Africa, we operate the largest bank-independent transaction processing service through EasyPay, where we have developed a suite of value-added services such as bill payment, airtime top-up, gift card, money transfer and prepaid utility purchases that we offer as a complete solution to merchants and retailers. In South Korea, through KSNET, we are one of the top three VAN processors, and we provide card processing, banking value-added services and payment gateway functionality to more than 237,000 retailers. Transact24 and Masterpayment are established, growing processors with experienced management teams which offer a variety of value-added online transaction processing services. Our expertise in on-line transaction processing and value-added services provides us with the opportunity to participate globally in this rapidly growing market segment.

Mobile payments: The rapid growth of online commerce and the emergence of mobile devices as the preferred access channel for transacting online has created a global opportunity for the provision of secure payment services to online retailers and service providers. Our Net1 Solutions business unit is focused on providing secure payment solutions for all card-not-present transactions through the application of our MVC and other proprietary solutions.

Despite lacking access to formal financial services, large proportions of the under-banked customer segment own and utilize mobile phones. The World Bank’s research has confirmed the rising popularity of using mobile phones to transfer money and for banking that often does not require setting up an account at a brick-and-mortar bank. The World Bank has stated that mobile banking, which allows account holders to pay bills, make deposits or conduct other transactions via text messaging, has rapidly expanded in Sub-Saharan Africa, where traditional banking has been hampered by transportation and other infrastructure problems. A World Bank report states that 1% of adults globally use a mobile money account and nothing else, while in Sub-Saharan Africa 12% of adults (64 million adults) have mobile money accounts (compared to just 2% worldwide) and 45% of these people only have a mobile money account.

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Mobile phones are therefore increasingly viewed as a channel through which this underserved population can gain access to formal financial and other services. Today, most mobile payment solutions offered by various participants in the industry largely provide access to information and basic services, such as allowing consumers to check account balances or transfer funds between existing accounts with the financial institution, but they offer limited functionality and ability to use the mobile device as an actual payments and banking instrument. Our UEPS and MVC solutions are enabled to run on the SIM cards in or as applications on mobile phones and provide our users with secure payment and banking functionality.

Healthcare: Given the lack of broad-based healthcare services in many emerging economies, governments are increasingly focused on driving initiatives to provide affordable and accessible healthcare services to their populations. Similarly, countries such as the United States are embarking on expansive overhauls of their existing healthcare systems.

Through our XeoHealth service we utilize our real-time rules engine and claims processing technology to offer governments, funders and providers of healthcare a comprehensive solution that offers a completely automated healthcare rules adjudication and payment system, reducing both cost and time.

Our Core Proprietary Technologies

UEPS and UEPS/EMV

We developed our core UEPS technology to enable the affordable delivery of financial products and services to the world’s unbanked and under-banked populations. Our native UEPS technology is designed to provide the secure delivery of these products and services in the most under-developed or rural environments, even in those that have little or no communications infrastructure. Unlike a traditional credit or debit card where the operation of the account occurs on a centralized computer, each of our smart cards effectively operates as an individual bank account for all types of transactions. All transactions that take place through our system occur between two smart cards at the point of service, or POS, as all of the relevant information necessary to perform and record transactions reside on the smart cards.

The transfer of money or other information can take place without any communication with a centralized computer since all validation, creation of audit records, encryption, decryption and authorization take place on, or are generated between, the smart cards themselves. Importantly, the cards are protected through the use of biometric fingerprint identification, which is designed to ensure the security of funds and card holder information and is more secure than traditional PIN identification. Transactions are generally settled by merchants and other commercial participants in the system by sending transaction data to a mainframe computer on a batch basis. Settlements can be performed online or offline. The mainframe computer provides a central database of transactions, creating a complete audit trail that enables us to replace lost smart cards while preserving the notional account balance, and to identify fraud.

Our UEPS technology includes functionality that allows the following:

Our UEPS technology incorporates the software, smart cards, payment terminals, back-end processing infrastructure, biometric systems and transaction security to provide a complete payment and transaction processing solution.

Within industry verticals, our UEPS technology is applied to electronic commerce transactions in the fields of social security, wage distribution, banking, medical and patient management, money transfers, voting and identification systems. Market sectors include government and non-government organizations, or NGOs, healthcare, telecoms, financial institutions, retailers, petroleum distributors and utilities.

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Our latest version of the UEPS technology is interoperable with the global EMV standard, allowing the cards to be used wherever EMV cards are accepted, while also providing all the additional functionality offered by UEPS. This UEPS/EMV functionality is especially relevant in areas where there is an established payment system and provides flexibility to our customers to be serviced at any POS, including point of sale devices and ATMs. Our UEPS/EMV solution therefore expands our addressable market to include developed economies with established payment networks. The UEPS/EMV technology removes the hurdle, often perceived in developed economies, of operating a proprietary or “closed-loop” system by providing a truly inter-operable payment solution.

Mobile Virtual Card

We developed MVC, an innovative mobile phone-based payment solution that enables secure purchases with no disruption to existing merchant infrastructures and provides significant incentives for all stakeholders.

MVC utilizes existing and traditional payment methods but enhances them by replacing or tokenizing plastic card data with one-time-use virtual card data, hence eliminating the risk of theft, phishing, skimming, spoofing, etc. The virtual card data replaces, digit-for-digit, the credit (or debit) card number, the expiration date and the card verification value with only the issuer bank identification number (first 6-digit) remaining constant.

MVC uses the mobile phone to generate virtual cards offline. The mobile phone is the most available, cost-effective, secure and portable platform for generating virtual cards for remote payments (online purchasing, money transfers, phone and catalogue orders).

Following a simple registration process, the virtual card application is activated over-the-air, enabling the phone to generate virtual card numbers completely off-line. MVCs are used like traditional plastic credit or debit cards, except that as soon as the transaction is authorized, the generated card number expires once the preset monetary amount has been utilized or after completion of the specific transaction that it was generated for. While MVC has been focused primarily on card-not-present transactions for internet payments in our initial deployments, we are constantly expanding the applicability of the software to incorporate new trends such as presentation through near field communication, or NFC, or Quick Response, or QR, Codes.

Consumers can easily generate a new card on their mobile phone to shop on the internet or to place a catalogue or telephone order. MVCs are completely secure and can also be sent in a single click to family, friends, and service providers. Once the authorization request reaches the issuing bank processor, our servers decrypt the virtual card data, authenticate the consumer and pass the transaction request to the card issuer for authorization. MVC can be offered as a prepaid solution or directly linked to a subscriber’s credit or debit card or other funding account. Subscribers can load prepaid virtual accounts with cash at participating locations, or electronically via their bank accounts, direct deposit or other electronic wallets.

The benefits of MVC include, for:

Our Strategy

We intend to provide the leading transacting system for the billions of unbanked and under-banked people in the world to engage in electronic transactions, to be the provider of choice for secure mobile payment and other card-not-present transactions and to provide our transaction processing, value-added services processing and healthcare processing services globally. To achieve these goals, we are pursuing the following strategies:

Build on our significant and established infrastructures—We control significant components of the payment infrastructure in South Africa, South Korea, Botswana and Namibia and we believe that we are well-positioned to leverage our existing asset base to continue to gain market share and build upon the critical mass that we have developed.

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For example, in South Africa, we are one of the leading independent transaction processors, the national provider of social welfare payment distribution services to the country’s large unbanked and under-banked population, the largest third-party processor of retail merchant transactions and the leading processor of third-party payroll payments. We believe that our large cardholder base, specialized technology and payment infrastructure, together with our strong business relationships, position us at the epicenter of commerce in the country. Through our national distribution platform and relationships with a number of leading companies across multiple industries, we believe that we can provide many of the services consumed by our cardholders who would normally not have access to these services or would otherwise have to rely on the informal sector. We have already introduced several services to our cardholder and merchant base, such as low cost, high functionality bank accounts, microloans, life insurance, bill payment, prepaid mobile top-up and prepaid utility services. We have a network of mobile ATMs to provide services to our cardholders, and we have established a national fixed ATM and POS network. We aim to increase the adoption of our existing services by expanding our cardholder base and our transacting network, and we aim to increase our service offerings by developing new products and distribution networks and by forging partnerships with industry participants who share our vision and can accelerate the implementation of our business plan. Our core focus remains the development and provision of our technological expertise. We have established significant operational assets to ensure the rapid deployment of our technology. As these deployments mature, we may share or dispose of these operational assets if we believe this will result in higher efficiencies and synergistic benefits where we are able to provide technology to an expanded base of clients and operations.

Our latest product, EasyPay Everywhere, provides our target market with an affordable all-inclusive transactional bank account with access to financially inclusive services such as microloans, life insurance, remittances, value added services such as prepaid utilities and bill payments through their mobile phones and our national network of ATMs and POS devices.

We plan to follow a similar approach in the other markets where we have an established infrastructure, taking into account the specific requirements of the local legislation, the composition of the local payment system and the specific components that we own or control. In markets where we do not have an established infrastructure, we intended to collaborate with local partners to provide a similar end-to-end solution.

Leveraging our new payment technologies to gain access to developed and developing economies—While our business has traditionally focused on marketing products and services to the world’s unbanked and under-banked population, we have developed and acquired proprietary technology, with a specific focus on mobile payments, that is particularly relevant to developed economies as well. Our MVC application for mobile telephones, for example, is designed to eliminate fraud associated with card-not-present credit card transactions effected by telephone or over the internet and are prevalent in developed economies such as the United States. We believe that mobile payments, mobile wallets and the related applications should be a critical component of a payment processor’s future strategy and we have dedicated a significant portion of our research and development and business development resources to ensure that we remain at the forefront of this rapidly evolving technological space. While some of our mobile solutions are more relevant in developed markets such as the United States and Europe, we are targeting our mobile payment solutions at developing economies, where mobile transacting is seen as the best solution to rapidly leapfrog the antiquated payment solutions typically available in these countries at minimal cost. We plan to expand our market share in the mobile solutions and card-not-present processing markets by pursuing partnerships or supply relationships with online merchants, virtual card issuers, payment services processors, mobile remittance providers and other online service providers.

Pursue strategic acquisition opportunities or partnerships to gain access to new markets or complementary product— We will continue to pursue acquisition opportunities and partnerships that provide us with an entry point for our existing products into a new market, or provide us with technologies or solutions complementary to our current offerings. Our recent investment in MobiKwik, an Indian mobile wallet provider, for example, provides us with access to the large Indian mobile transacting and e-commerce market. Our acquisitions of Transact24 Limited, Masterpayment and our proposed investment in Bank Frick provide us with access to the leading global card issuers, acquirers and processors such as Visa, Mastercard, China UnionPay, Alipay, SWIFT and SEPA and enable us to provide small and medium e-commerce enterprises with a complete service offering, including bank accounts, card issuing and acquiring, processing and value-added products such as working capital financing. In addition, we expect to leverage our relationship with the International Finance Corporation, or IFC to pursue strategic and synergistic acquisition opportunities and partnerships in developing markets.

Our Business Units

Our company is organized into the following business units:

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Net1 Solutions

Our Net1 Solutions business unit is managed from Johannesburg, South Africa with business development support branches in the United Kingdom and India. This business unit is responsible for the technical development and commercialization of our array of web and mobile applications and payment technologies.

Net1 Solutions offers an array of products and services that cater for the needs of the global market and comprises of the following key business lines:

This business unit has been allocated to our South African processing, International transaction processing, and Financial inclusion and applied technologies reporting segments.

KSNET

Our KSNET business unit is based in Seoul, South Korea, and is a national payment solutions provider. KSNET has one of the broadest product offerings in the South Korean payment solutions market, a base of approximately 237,000 merchants and an extensive direct and indirect sales network. KSNET’s core operations comprise three project offerings, namely card VAN, payment gateway, or PG, and banking VAN. KSNET is able to realize significant synergies across these core operations because it is the only payment solutions provider that offers all three of these offerings in South Korea. Over 90% of KSNET’s revenue comes from the provision of payment processing services to merchants and card issuers through its card VAN.

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KSNET’s core product offerings are described in more detail below:

This business unit has been allocated to our International transaction processing reporting segment.

Masterpayment

Our Masterpayment business unit is based in Munich, Germany, and is a specialist payment services processor. Masterpayment provides payment and acquiring services for all major European debit and credit cards; and invoicing for online retail, digital goods and content. Masterpayment currently has a client portfolio of approximately 1,000 registered merchants.

In collaboration with Bank Frick & Co. AG, or Bank Frick, a Liechtenstein-based bank, Masterpayment provides its e-commerce merchants with working capital optimization by providing a flexible form of financing, which employs a trading transaction instead of traditional bank credit. Masterpayment’s “Finetrading” product enables the seamless financing of a merchant’s inventory orders, resulting in accelerated payment settlement and the elimination of the requirement for a merchant to maintain rolling reserves or cash advances.

This business unit has been allocated to our International transaction processing reporting segment.

Transact24

Our Transact24 business unit is based in Hong Kong, China, and is a payment services provider.

Transact24’s primary business activities include:

This business unit has been allocated to our International transaction processing reporting segment.

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Cash Paymaster Services

Our CPS business unit is based in Johannesburg, South Africa, and deploys our UEPS/EMV–Social Grant Distribution technology to distribute social welfare grants on a monthly basis to over ten million recipient cardholders in South Africa. These social welfare grants are distributed on behalf of the South African Social Security Agency, or SASSA. During our 2017, 2016 and 2015 fiscal years, we derived approximately 22%, 21%, and 24% of our revenues respectively, from CPS’ social welfare grant distribution business.

CPS provides a secure and affordable transacting channel between social welfare grant recipient cardholders, beneficiaries, SASSA and formal businesses. CPS enrolls social welfare grant recipient cardholders and, as appropriate, the respective beneficiaries by issuing the recipient cardholder with a UEPS/EMV smart card that digitally stores their biometric fingerprint templates on the card, enabling them to access their social welfare grants securely at any time or place and providing them with a fully-fledged bank account.

The smart card is issued to the recipient cardholder on site and utilizes optical fingerprint sensor technology to identify and verify a recipient cardholder. The recipient cardholder simply inserts a smart card into the POS device and is prompted to present his fingerprint. If the fingerprint matches the one stored on the smart card, the smart card is loaded with the value created for that particular smart card and the card holder has access to all the UEPS/EMV functionality, including cash withdrawals, retail purchases and, upon application, financial inclusion services.

Our UEPS/EMV–Social Grant Distribution technology provides numerous benefits to government agencies, recipient cardholders and beneficiaries. The system offers government a reliable service at a reasonable price. For recipient cardholders and, as appropriate, the beneficiaries, our smart card offers financial inclusion, convenience, security, affordability, flexibility and accessibility. They can avoid long waiting lines at payment locations and do not have to get to payment locations on scheduled payment dates to receive cash. They do not lose money if they lose their smart cards, since a lost smart card is replaceable and the biometric fingerprint or voice identification technology helps prevent fraud. Their personal security risks are reduced since they do not have to safeguard their cash. Recipient cardholders have access to affordable financial services, can save money on their smart cards and can perform money transfers to friends and relatives living in other provinces. Finally, recipient cardholders pay no transaction fees when they use our CPS infrastructure to load their smart cards, perform balance inquiries, purchase goods or effect monthly debit orders. For us, the system allows us to reduce our operating costs by reducing the amount of cash we have to transport.

This business unit has been allocated to our South African transaction processing and Financial inclusion and applied technologies reporting segments.

EasyPay

Our EasyPay business unit operates the largest bank-independent financial switch in South Africa and is based in Cape Town, South Africa. EasyPay focuses on the provision of high-volume, secure and convenient payment, prepayment and value-added services to the South African market. EasyPay’s infrastructure connects into all major South African banks and switches both debit and credit card EFT transactions for some of South Africa’s leading retailers and petroleum companies. It is a South African Reserve Bank, or SARB, approved third-party payment processor. In addition to its core transaction processing and switching operations, EasyPay provides a complete end-to-end reconciliation and settlement service to its customers. This service includes dynamic reconciliation as well as easy-to-use report and screen-query tools for down-to-store-level, management and control purposes.

The EasyPay suite of services includes:

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EasyPay provides 24x7 monitoring and support services, reconciliation, automated clearing bureau settlement, reporting, full disaster recovery and redundancy services.

This business unit has been allocated to our South African transaction processing reporting segment.

Financial Services

We have developed a suite of financial services that is offered to customers utilizing our payment solutions. We are able to provide our UEPS/EMV cardholders with competitive transacting accounts, microfinance, life insurance and money transfer products based on our understanding of their risk profiles, demographics and lifestyle requirements. Our financial services offerings are designed on the principles of simplicity and cost-efficiency as they bring financial inclusion to our millions of cardholders who were previously unable to access any formal financial services. Our latest product, EasyPay Everywhere, provides our target market with an affordable all-inclusive transactional bank account with unfettered access to financial services such as microloans, life insurance, remittances, value added services such as prepaid utilities and bill payments through their mobile phones and our national network of ATMs and POS devices.

Our largest financial services offering is the provision of short-term microloans to our South African UEPS/EMV cardholders, where we provide the loans using our surplus cash reserves and earn revenue from the service fees charged on these loans. We believe our loans are the most affordable form of credit available to our target market as, unlike our competitors, we do not charge interest, initiation fees or credit life insurance premiums on our loans. Our Smart Life business unit owns a life insurance license and offers our customer base affordable insurance products applicable to this market segment, focusing on group life and funeral insurance policies.

This business unit has been allocated to our Financial inclusion and applied technologies reporting segment.

Applied Technology

Our Applied Technology business unit is managed from Johannesburg, South Africa, and is responsible for the deployment of our South African ATM and POS network and the sale of biometric and POS solutions to various South African banks, retailers and financial services providers.

Our ATM network is fully EMV-compliant and integrated into the South African national payment system. We deploy our ATMs in areas where our UEPS/EMV cardholders have limited access to the national payment system, or where the cost of accessing the national payment system through other service providers is prohibitive for our cardholders.

This business unit has been allocated to our South African transaction processing and Financial inclusion and applied technologies reporting segments.

XeoHealth

Our XeoHealth business unit operates in the U.S. from Frederick, Maryland, and offers our XeoRules real time adjudication, or RTS, solutions for the end-to-end electronic processing of medical claims information in the United States. XeoHealth has won a number of projects in the United States either as the primary contractor for the provision of our RTS solution to customers, or as a sub-contractor to parties contracted to provide an adjudication solution.

This business unit has been allocated to our International transaction processing reporting segment.

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Corporate

The Corporate unit provides global support services to our business units, joint ventures and investments for the following activities:

Competition

In addition to competition that our UEPS system faces from the use of cash, checks, credit and debit cards, existing payment systems and the providers of financial services, there are a number of other products that use smart card technology in connection with a funds transfer system. While it is impossible for us to estimate the total number of competitors in the global payments marketplace, we believe that the most competitive product in this marketplace is EMV, a system that is promoted by most of the major card companies such as Visa, MasterCard, JCB and American Express. The competitive advantage of our UEPS offering is that our technology can operate real-time, but in an off-line environment, using biometric identification instead of the standard PIN methodology employed by our competitors. We have enhanced our competitive advantage through the development of our latest version of the UEPS technology that has been certified by EMV, which facilitates our traditionally proprietary UEPS system to interoperate with the global EMV standard and allows card holders to transact at any EMV-enabled point of sale terminal or ATM. The UEPS/EMV technology has been deployed on an extensive scale in South Africa through the issuance of MasterCard-branded UEPS/EMV cards to our social welfare grant recipient cardholders. We estimate that we process less than 1% of all global payment transactions in the international marketplace.

In South Africa, and specifically in the payment of salaries and wages and our affordable EasyPay Everywhere transactional account and our financial services offering, our competitors include the local banks, insurance companies, micro-lenders and other transaction processors. The South African banks and the South African Post Office, or SAPO, also offer low cost bank accounts that enable account holders to receive their salaries, wages or social grants through the formal banking payment networks.

The payment of social welfare grants in South Africa has historically been determined through a highly competitive tender process managed by SASSA. The participants in SASSA’s tender processes have historically included the local banks, other payment processors, SAPO and mobile operators. Our current SASSA contract expires at the end of March 2018 and SASSA has indicated that it intends to internalize all material aspects related to grant payment and administration in collaboration with SAPO.

EasyPay’s competitors include BankservAfrica, UCS, eCentric and Transaction Junction. BankservAfrica is the largest transaction processor in South Africa which processes all transactions on behalf of the South African banks and processes more than 2,5 billion transactions valued at trillions of ZAR per annum.

In the South African ATM network market, we compete against the South African banks, ATM Solutions and Spark ATM Systems, who collectively have a market share in excess of 90%.

We have identified 13 major card VAN companies in South Korea, of which KSNET is one of the three largest. The other two large VAN companies are NICE Information & Telecommunication Inc. and Korea Information & Communications Company, Inc. Entities operating in the VAN industry in South Korea compete on pricing and customer service.

In addition to our traditional competitors, we expect that we will increasingly compete with a number of emerging entities in the mobile payments industry. While the industry is still rapidly evolving, a number of entities are establishing their presence in this space. Specifically identified entities include traditional payment networks such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express; commercial banks such as Barclays and Citigroup; established technology companies such as Apple, Google, Samsung and PayPal; mobile operators such as AT&T, Verizon, Vodafone, MTN and Bharti Airtel; as well as companies specifically focused on mobile payments such as M-Pesa and Square.

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Research and Development

During fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, we incurred research and development expenditures of $2.0 million, $2.3 million and $2.4 million, respectively. These expenditures consist primarily of the salaries of our software engineers and developers. Our research and development activities relate primarily to the continual revision and improvement of our core UEPS and UEPS/EMV software and its functionality as well as the design and development of our MVC concept and mobile payment applications. For example, we continually improve our security protocols and algorithms as well as develop new UEPS features that we believe will enhance the attractiveness of our product and service offerings. Our research and development efforts also focus on taking advantage of improvements in hardware platforms that are not proprietary to us but form part of our system.

Intellectual Property

Our success depends in part on our ability to develop, maintain and protect our intellectual property. We rely on a combination of patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secret laws, as well as non-disclosure agreements to protect our intellectual property. We seek to protect new intellectual property developed by us by filing new patents worldwide. We hold a number of trademarks in various countries.

Financial Information about Geographical Areas and Operating Segments

Note 23 to our consolidated financial statements included in this annual report contains detailed financial information about our operating segments for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015. Revenues based on the geographic location from which the sale originated and geographic location where long-lived assets are held for the years ended June 30, are presented in the table below:

Employees

Our number of employees allocated on a segmental basis as of the years ended June 30, are presented in the table below:

⁽¹⁾    Financial inclusion and applied technologies includes employees allocated to corporate/ eliminations activities.

On a functional basis, six of our employees were part of executive management, 156 were employed in sales and marketing, 257 were employed in finance and administration, 312 were employed in information technology and 4,627 were employed in operations.

As of June 30, 2017, approximately 56 of the 2,487 and three of the 2,281 employees we have in South Africa who were performing transaction-based and financial inclusion activities, respectively, were members of the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union and approximately 188 of the 247 employees we have in South Korea who perform international transaction-based activities were members of the KSNET Union. We believe that we have a good relationship with our employees and these unions.

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Corporate history

Net1 was incorporated in Florida in May 1997. In June 2004, Net1 acquired Net1 Applied Technology Holdings Limited, or Aplitec, a public company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, or JSE. In 2005, Net1 completed an initial public offering and listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market. In October 2008, Net1 listed on the JSE in a secondary listing, which enabled the former Aplitec shareholders (as well as South African residents generally) to hold Net1 common stock directly.

Available information

We maintain a website at www.net1.com. Our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to those reports are available free of charge through the “SEC filings” portion of our website, as soon as reasonably practicable after they are filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information contained on, or accessible through, our website is not incorporated into this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Executive Officers of the Registrant

The table below presents our executive officers, their ages and their titles:

Herman Kotzé has been our Chief Executive Officer since May 2017 and our Chief Financial Officer, Secretary and Treasurer since June 2004. From January 2000 until June 2004, he served on the board of Aplitec as Group Financial Director. Mr. Kotzé joined Aplitec in November 1998 as a strategic financial analyst. Prior to joining Aplitec, Mr. Kotzé was a business analyst at the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa. Mr. Kotzé has a bachelor of commerce honors degree, a post graduate diploma in treasury management, a higher diploma in taxation, completed his articles at KPMG, and is a member of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Philip Meyer has been the Managing Director of Transact24 Limited since he founded the company in 2006. Mr. Meyer has worked in the payments industry for over 20 years. Prior to incorporating Transact24, he was employed by Naspers, a global media group, as its Chief Executive: Information Technology and New Media and was responsible for all existing and new technology and media for Naspers. Mr. Meyer is a qualified engineer with a masters in engineering (electronic) and has a postgraduate diploma in strategic management. Mr. Meyer is registered with the Engineering Counsel of South Africa, is a member of the South Africa Institute of Electrical Engineers and is also a member of the Digital, Information & Telecommunications Committee and Asia & Africa Committee, Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce.

Phil-Hyun Oh has served as Chief Executive Officer and President of KSNET since 2007. He is the Chairman of the VAN Association in South Korea. Prior to that, he was the Managing Partner at Dasan Accounting Firm and was the Head of the Investment Banking Division at Daewoo Securities. Mr. Oh is responsible for the day to day operations of KSNET and as its Chief Executive Officer and President is instrumental in setting and implementing its strategy and objectives.

Nanda Pillay joined us in May 2000 and is responsible for our Southern African operations, including CPS, Financial Services, EasyPay, Net1 Solutions and SmartSwitch Botswana.

Nitin Soma has served as our Chief Technology Officer since June 2004. Mr. Soma joined Aplitec in 1997. He specializes in transaction switching and interbank settlements and designed the Stratus back-end system for Aplitec. Mr. Soma has over 20 years of experience in the development and design of smart card payment systems. Mr. Soma has a bachelor of science (computer science and applied mathematics) degree.

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OUR OPERATIONS AND FINANCIAL RESULTS ARE SUBJECT TO VARIOUS RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES, INCLUDING THOSE DESCRIBED BELOW, THAT COULD ADVERSELY AFFECT OUR BUSINESS, FINANCIAL CONDITION, RESULTS OF OPERATIONS, CASH FLOWS, AND THE TRADING PRICE OF OUR COMMON STOCK.

Risks Relating to Our Business

Our SASSA contract has been extended and now expires at the end of March 2018 following an order issued by the Constitutional Court on March 17, 2017. It is unclear to us whether SASSA will issue a new grants payment tender or whether it intends to take over the distribution of social grants when our contract expires. We derive a significant portion of our revenue from our SASSA contract, which we will lose if and when we no longer provide a service to SASSA.

We derive a significant portion of our revenues from our contract with SASSA for the payment of social grants. Our SASSA contract, which we were awarded through a competitive tender process in 2012, was scheduled to expire in March 2017. However, in March 2017, the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Constitutional Court, which retained oversight of SASSA as a result of litigation regarding the original award of the contract to us on 2012, held that SASSA and CPS have a constitutional obligation to continue to pay social welfare grants and ordered that the contract be extended for another year. Refer to “Item 3—Legal Proceedings” for a summary of the Constitutional Court’s order.

We will lose the SASSA revenues after March 2018 if we then no longer have a contract with SASSA, which would occur if SASSA follows a tender process and awards the tender to a new service provider or providers or performs the social grants distribution service itself. Unless we are able to replace most or all of these revenues from other sources, our results of operations, financial position, cash flows and future growth are likely to suffer materially.

It is possible that SASSA might request us to enter a transition agreement in order to phase out our services. The Constitutional Court reaffirmed in its March 2017 ruling that CPS is deemed to be an “organ of state” for the purposes of the contract between SASSA and CPS, and that CPS has “constitutional obligations” that go beyond its contractual obligations. It is not clear what these obligations may entail in respect of the current and any potential future government contract in South Africa. We cannot predict what the financial or other implications may be if we are required to provide our services without a valid contract, or during any transitional period required for the orderly transfer of our services to SASSA or to a new contractor.

Our South African business practices have come under intense scrutiny in the South African media, especially during the last several months. We have attempted to publicly refute what we believe to be misleading or factually incorrect statements that have damaged our reputation. However, our ability to operate effectively and efficiently in South Africa in the future will be adversely impacted if we are unable to communicate persuasively that our business practices comply with South African law and are fair to the customers who purchase our financial services products.

Our contract with SASSA was expected to expire on March 31, 2017, and by the end of February 2017, it became apparent that SASSA did not intend to bring the social welfare payment service in-house after the contract expiration. The risk of there being no payment service, or a limited service, to social welfare grant recipients in April 2017 and beyond, resulted in a public furor in South Africa in March 2017, despite SASSA’s continued assurance that grants would be paid on time in April 2017. The South African public, media, non-governmental organizations and political parties were particularly angered by SASSA’s failure to have a plan to perform the service itself and utilized a number of platforms, including social media, to express their dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. They specifically accused us of bearing responsibility for SASSA’s inability to bring the payment service in-house. In addition, we were publicly accused of illegally providing our services and defrauding social welfare grant recipients. We have publicly denied these accusations and believe they have no merit.

Our reputation in South Africa has been tarnished as a result of these accusations. We have attempted to refute the accusations made against us and have appointed a public relations firm to assist us in communicating effectively to the public and our stakeholders that our business practices comply with South African law and are fair to the social welfare grant recipients who purchase the financial services products that we offer. However, it is difficult to quantify to what extent we have been successful in effectively repudiating these unsubstantiated allegations against us. If we are unable to communicate persuasively that our business practices comply with South African law and are fair to the customers who purchase our financial services products, our ability to operate effectively and efficiently in South Africa in the future will be adversely impacted, and our results of operations, financial position and cash flows would be adversely affected.

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SASSA continues to challenge our ability to conduct certain aspects of our financial services business in a commercial manner through its interpretation of recently adopted regulations under the Social Assistance Act. We are in litigation with SASSA over its interpretation of these regulations. If SASSA were to prevail in this legal proceeding, our business will suffer.

As described under “Item 3—Legal Proceedings— Litigation Regarding Legality of Debit Orders under Social Assistance Act Regulations,” the High Court of the Republic of South Africa Gauteng Division, Pretoria, or Pretoria High Court, has issued the declaratory order sought by us that the Social Assistance Act and Regulations do not restrict social grant recipients in the operation of their banks accounts. SASSA continues to challenge our ability to operate certain aspects of our financial services business in a commercial manner in the South African courts. The Black Sash has also served applications petitioning the South African Supreme Court of Appeal, or the Supreme Court, to grant them leave to appeal the Pretoria High Court order through either the Supreme Court or to a full bench of the Pretoria High Court.

If SASSA or the Black Sash were to prevail with their legal actions, our ability to operate our business, specifically our micro-lending and insurance activities in a commercially viable manner would be impaired, which would likely have a material adverse effect on our business and might harm our reputation. Regardless of the outcome, management will be required to devote further time and resources to these legal proceedings, which may impact their ability to focus their attention on our business.

We are, and in the future may be, subject to litigation in which private parties may seek to recover, on behalf of SASSA, amounts paid to us under our SASSA contract. If such litigation were to be successful and require us to repay substantial monies to SASSA, such repayment would adversely affect our results of operations, financial position and cash flows.

In April 2015, Corruption Watch, a South African non-profit civil society organization, commenced a legal proceeding in the High Court of South Africa, seeking an order from the Court to review and set aside the decision of SASSA’s Chief Executive Officer to approve a payment to us of approximately ZAR 317 million including VAT, or approximately ZAR 277 million excluding VAT. Corruption Watch claims that there was no lawful basis for the decision to make the payment to us, and that the decision was unreasonable and irrational and did not comply with South African law. We are named as a respondent in this proceeding.

The payments being challenged by Corruption Watch represent amounts paid to us by SASSA for the costs we incurred in performing additional beneficiary registrations and gathering information beyond those that we were contractually required to perform under our SASSA contract. SASSA requested us to biometrically register all social grant beneficiaries (including all child beneficiaries), in addition to the grant recipients who were issued with the SASSA-branded UEPS/EMV smart cards. As a result, we performed approximately 11 million additional registrations that did not form part of its monthly service fee. These amounts were paid in full settlement of the claim we submitted to SASSA for these additional costs. We believe that Corruption Watch’s claim is without merit and we are defending it vigorously. However, we cannot predict how the Court will rule on the matter.

In addition, the April 2014 Constitutional Court ruling ordering SASSA to re-run the tender process required us to file with the Court, after completion of our SASSA contract in March 2017, an audited statement of our expenses, income and net profit under the contract. We filed the required information with the Constitutional Court on May 30, 2017. The March 2017 Constitutional Court order contains a similar requirement that we file an audited statement of our expenses, income and net profit under our amended contract that expires in March 2018. It is conceivable that one or more third parties may in the future institute litigation challenging our right to retain a portion of the amounts we will have received from SASSA under our contract. We cannot predict whether any such litigation will be instituted, or if it is, whether it would be successful.

Any successful challenge to our right to receive and retain payments from SASSA that requires substantial repayments would adversely affect our results of operations, financial position and cash flows.

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We have disclosed competitively sensitive information as a result of the AllPay litigation, which could adversely affect our competitive position in the future.

In connection with the litigation challenging the award of the SASSA tender to us in fiscal 2012 through fiscal 2015, we included our entire 2011 SASSA tender submission in the court record, which court record is in the public domain. Our tender submission contains competitively sensitive business information. As a result of this disclosure, our existing and future competitors have access to this information which could adversely affect our competitive position in any future similar tender submissions to the extent that such information continues to remain competitively sensitive.

In order to meet our obligations under our current SASSA contract, we are required to deposit government funds with financial institutions in South Africa before commencing the payment cycle and are exposed to counterparty risk.

In order to meet our obligations under our current SASSA contract, we are required to deposit government funds, which will ultimately be used to pay social welfare grants, with financial institutions in South Africa before commencing the payment cycle. If these financial institutions are unable to meet their commitments to us, in a timely manner or at all, we would be unable to discharge our obligations under our SASSA contract and could be subject to financial losses, penalties, loss of reputation and potentially, the cancellation of our contract. As we are unable to influence these financial institutions’ operations, including their internal information technology structures, capital structures, risk management, business continuity and disaster recovery programs, or their regulatory compliance systems, we are exposed to counterparty risk.

We may undertake acquisitions or make strategic investments that could increase our costs or liabilities or be disruptive to our business.

Acquisitions and strategic investments are an integral part of our long-term growth strategy as we seek to grow our business internationally and to deploy our technologies in new markets both inside and outside South Africa. However, we may not be able to locate suitable acquisition or investment candidates at prices that we consider appropriate. If we do identify an appropriate acquisition or investment candidate, we may not be able to successfully negotiate the terms of the transaction, finance it or, if the transaction occurs, integrate the new business into our existing business. These transactions may require debt financing or additional equity financing, resulting in additional leverage or dilution of ownership. For instance, in July 2017, we invested in Cell C utilizing a combination of existing cash reserves and external debt from South African banks – refer also to Item 7—“Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Developments During Fiscal 2017—Strategic investments.”

Acquisitions of businesses or other material operations and the integration of these acquisitions or their businesses will require significant attention from our senior management which may divert their attention from our day to day business. The difficulties of integration may be increased by the necessity of coordinating geographically dispersed organizations, integrating personnel with disparate business backgrounds and combining different corporate cultures. We also may not be able to maintain key employees or customers of an acquired business or realize cost efficiencies or synergies or other benefits that we anticipated when selecting our acquisition candidates.

In addition, we may need to record write-downs from future impairments of goodwill or other intangible assets, which could reduce our future reported earnings. Finally, acquisition candidates may have liabilities or adverse operating issues that we fail to discover through due diligence prior to the acquisition.

We may not achieve the expected benefits from our recent Cell C and DNI investments.

We have recently invested more than $220 million in the aggregate to acquire a 15% interest in Cell C Proprietary Limited and a 45% interest in DNI-4PL Contracts Proprietary Limited, or DNI. We believe that there are potential synergies that we can derive from these transactions, including the ability to integrate our service offerings to certain of our customers with those of Cell C and DNI, which we would then expect to help expand the businesses of Cell C and DNI as well. However, we may not realize the benefits we expect to achieve from these investments. First, attempting to integrate these service offerings may be disruptive to us and we may not be able to integrate these offerings successfully. Even if we are able to achieve this integration, our customers may not use these services to the extent that we hope they will. Any such failure could adversely impact our own business as well as Cell C’s and DNI’s, which could then reduce the value of our investments. Additionally, attempting to integrate Cell C’s and DNI’s offerings with our own may adversely impact our other business and operational relationships. Our inability to achieve the expected synergies from the Cell C and DNI transactions may have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations or financial condition. For example, our revenues and operating income may be adversely affected and we could be required to impair all, or a part of, our investment.

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We have a significant amount of indebtedness that requires us to comply with restrictive and financial covenants. If we are unable to comply with these covenants, we could default on this debt, which would have a material adverse effect on our business and financial condition.

We financed our recent investment in Cell C through South African bank borrowings of ZAR 1.25 billion ($95.7 million, translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017). The loans are secured by intercompany cross-guarantees and a pledge by Net1 Applied Technologies South Africa Proprietary Limited, or Net1 SA, of its entire equity interests in Cell C and DNI. The terms of the lending arrangement contain customary covenants that require Net1 SA to maintain a specified total net leverage ratio and restrict the ability of Net1 SA, and certain of its subsidiaries to make certain distributions with respect to their capital stock, prepay other debt, encumber their assets, incur additional indebtedness, make investment above specified levels, engage in certain business combinations and engage in other corporate activities.

In addition, as of June 30, 2017, we had approximately KRW 18.6 billion ($16.2 million, translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017) of outstanding indebtedness, which we incurred to finance our acquisition of KSNET in October 2010. These loans are secured by a pledge by Net1 Korea of its entire equity interest in KSNET and a pledge by the immediate parent of Net1 Korea (also one of our subsidiaries) of its entire equity interest in Net1 Korea. The terms of the loan facility require Net1 Korea and its consolidated subsidiaries to maintain certain specified financial ratios (including a leverage ratio and a debt service coverage ratio) and restrict Net1 Korea’s ability to make certain distributions with respect to its capital stock, prepay other debt, encumber its assets, incur additional indebtedness, or engage in certain business combinations.

Although these covenants only apply to certain of our South African subsidiaries and our South Korean subsidiaries, respectively, these security arrangements and covenants may reduce our operating flexibility or our ability to engage in other transactions that may be beneficial to us. If we are unable to comply with the covenants in South Africa or South Korea, we could be in default and the indebtedness could be accelerated. If this were to occur, we might not be able to obtain waivers of default or to refinance the debt with another lender and as a result, our business and financial condition would suffer.

We face competition from the incumbent retail banks in South Africa and SAPO in the unbanked market segment, which could limit growth in our transaction-based activities segment.

Certain South African banks have also developed their own low-cost banking products targeted at the unbanked and under-banked market segment. According to the 2016 FinScope survey, which is an annual survey conducted by the FinMark Trust, a non-profit independent trust, 77% of South Africans are banked (58% if SASSA account holders are excluded). As the competition to bank the unbanked in South Africa intensifies, we may not be successful in marketing our low-cost EasyPay Everywhere product to our target population. Moreover, as our product offerings increase, gain market acceptance and pose a competitive threat in South Africa, especially our UEPS/EMV product with biometric verification and our financial services offerings, the banks and SAPO may seek governmental or other regulatory intervention if they view us as disrupting their transactional or other businesses.

Our microlending loan book exposes us to credit risk and our allowance for doubtful finance loans receivable may not be sufficient to absorb future write-offs.

All of these microfinance loans made are for a period of six months or less. We have created an allowance for doubtful finance loans receivable related to this book. Management has considered factors including the period of the finance loan outstanding, creditworthiness of the customers and the past payment history of the borrower when creating the allowance. We consider this policy to be appropriate taking into account factors such as historical bad debts, current economic trends and changes in our customer payment patterns. However, additional allowances may be required should the ability of our customers to make payments when due deteriorate in the future. A significant amount of judgment is required to assess the ultimate recoverability of these finance loan receivables, including on-going evaluation of the creditworthiness of each customer.

Our Mastertrading working capital financing and supply chain solutions receivables expose us to credit risk and our allowance for doubtful working capital finance loans receivable may not be sufficient to absorb future write-offs.

We have created an allowance for doubtful working capital finance receivables related to our Mastertrading business. We have considered factors including the period of the working capital receivable outstanding, creditworthiness of the customers and the past payment history of the borrower when creating the allowance. A significant amount of judgment is required to assess the ultimate recoverability of these working capital finance receivables because this is a new offering and we continue to refine and improve our processes, including the maximum amount of exposure per customer that we are willing to accept and the on-going evaluation of the creditworthiness of each customer.

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A determination that requires a change in our allowance for doubtful working capital finance receivables, or a failure by one or more of our customers to pay a significant portion of outstanding working capital finance receivables, could have a negative impact on our business, operating results, cash flows and financial condition.

We have obtained short-term financing from Bank Frick to fund our Mastertrading working capital and supply chain solutions offering in Europe. We may need to utilize existing cash reserves to settle these short-term facilities if our working capital customers do not repay us under the terms of our agreements with them.

As of June 30, 2017, we had utilized CHF 15.9 million of our CHF 20 million short-term facility from Bank Frick to fund the growth of the majority of the European working capital receivables. The facility does not have a fixed term, however it may be terminated by either party with six months written notice at the end of a calendar month. Certain of our working capital finance agreements are for a period of up to nine months and if Bank Frick were to terminate its lending facility with six months notice, we may be required to utilize our existing cash reserves to settle a portion of the Bank Frick facility which could have an adverse impact on our business, operating results, cash flows and financial condition. We have also provided Bank Frick a corporate guarantee as security for this CHF 20 million facility as well as a EUR 40 million facility obtained from Bank Frick.

We may face competition from other companies that offer smart card technology, other innovative payment technologies and payment processing, which could result in loss of our existing business and adversely impact our ability to successfully market additional products and services.

Our primary competitors in the payment processing market include other independent processors, as well as financial institutions, independent sales organizations, and, potentially card networks. Many of our competitors are companies who are larger than we are and have greater financial and operational resources than we have. These factors may allow them to offer better pricing terms or incentives to customers, which could result in a loss of our potential or current customers or could force us to lower our prices as well. Either of these actions could have a significant effect on our revenues and earnings.

In addition to competition that our UEPS system faces from the use of cash, checks, credit and debit cards, existing payment systems and the providers of financial services and low cost bank accounts, there are a number of other products that use smart card technology in connection with a funds transfer system. During the past several years, smart card technology has become increasingly prevalent. We believe that the most competitive product in this marketplace is EMV, a system that is promoted by most of the major card companies such as Visa, MasterCard, JCB and American Express. Also, governments and financial institutions are, to an increasing extent, implementing general-purpose reloadable prepaid cards as a low-cost alternative to provide financial services to the unbanked population. Moreover, as the acceptance of using a mobile phone to facilitate financial services has increased exponentially, other companies have introduced such services to the marketplace successfully and customers may prefer those services to ours, based on technology, price or other factors.

A prolonged economic slowdown or lengthy or severe recession in South Africa or elsewhere could harm our operations.

A prolonged economic downturn or recession could materially impact our results from operations. A recessionary economic environment could have a negative impact on mobile phone operators, our cardholders and retailers and could reduce the level of transactions we process and the take-up of financial services we offer, which would, in turn, negatively impact our financial results. If financial institutions and retailers experience decreased demand for their products and services our hardware, software and related technology sales will reduce, resulting in lower revenue.

The loss of the services of certain of our executive officers would adversely affect our business.

Our future financial and operational performance depends, in large part, on the continued contributions of our senior management, in particular, Mr. Herman Kotzé, our Chief Executive and Chief Financial Officer. Many of our key responsibilities in South Africa are currently performed by Mr. Kotzé, as well as by Messrs. Nanda Pillay, our Managing Director: Southern Africa and Nitin Soma, our Senior Vice President of Information Technology. We are actively seeking to appoint a new Chief Financial Officer, and until this executive has been appointed there is a risk that Mr. Kotzé may become overburdened with his multiple executive responsibilities. The loss of the services of any of these executives would disrupt our development efforts or business relationships and our ability to continue to innovate and to meet customers’ needs, which could have a material adverse effect on our business and financial performance.

In addition, the success of our KSNET business depends heavily on the continued services of its president, Phil-Hyun Oh and the other senior members of the KSNET management team. Mr. Oh’s current contract expired in June 2017, and has not been renewed and therefore he may terminate his employment at any time. We do not maintain any “key person” life insurance policies.

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We face a highly competitive employment market and may not be successful in attracting and retaining a sufficient number of skilled employees, particularly in the technical and sales areas and senior management.

Our future success depends on our ability to continue to develop new products and to market these products to our target users. In order to succeed in our product development and marketing efforts, we need to identify, attract, motivate and retain sufficient numbers of qualified technical and sales personnel. An inability to hire and retain such technical personnel would adversely affect our ability to enhance our existing intellectual property, to introduce new generations of technology and to keep abreast of current developments in technology. Demand for personnel with the range of capabilities and experience we require is high and there is no assurance that we will be successful in attracting and retaining these employees. The risk exists that our technical skills and sales base may be depleted over time because of natural attrition. Furthermore, social and economic factors in South Africa have led, and continue to lead, to numerous qualified individuals leaving the country, thus depleting the availability of qualified personnel in South Africa. In addition, our multi-country strategy will also require us to hire and retain highly qualified managerial personnel in each of these markets. If we cannot recruit and retain people with the appropriate capabilities and experience and effectively integrate these people into our business, it could negatively affect our product development and marketing activities.

System failures, including breaches in the security of our system, could harm our business.

We may experience system failures from time to time, and any lengthy interruption in the availability of our back-end system computer could harm our revenues and profits, and could subject us to the scrutiny of our customers.

Frequent or persistent interruptions in our services could cause current or potential customers and users to believe that our systems are unreliable, leading them to avoid our technology altogether, and could permanently harm our reputation and brands. These interruptions would increase the burden on our engineering staff, which, in turn, could delay our introduction of new applications and services. Finally, because our customers may use our products for critical transactions, any system failures could result in damage to our customers’ businesses. These customers could seek significant compensation from us for their losses. Even if unsuccessful, this type of claim could be time consuming and costly for us to address.

Although our systems have been designed to reduce downtime in the event of outages or catastrophic occurrences, they remain vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunication failures, terrorist attacks, computer viruses, computer denial-of-service attacks and similar events. Some of our systems are not fully redundant, and our disaster recovery planning may not be sufficient for all eventualities.

Protection against fraud is of key importance to the purchasers and end users of our solutions. We incorporate security features, including encryption software, biometric identification and secure hardware, into our solutions to protect against fraud in electronic transactions and to provide for the privacy and integrity of card holder data. Our solutions may be vulnerable to breaches in security due to defects in the security mechanisms, the operating system and applications or the hardware platform. Security vulnerabilities could jeopardize the security of information transmitted using our solutions. If the security of our solutions is compromised, our reputation and marketplace acceptance of our solutions will be adversely affected, which would cause our business to suffer, and we may become subject to damage claims. We have not yet experienced any significant security breaches affecting our business.

Despite any precautions we may take, the occurrence of a natural disaster or other unanticipated problems with our system could result in lengthy interruptions in our services. Our current business interruption insurance may not be sufficient to compensate us for losses that may result from interruptions in our service as a result of system failures.

The period between our initial contact with a potential customer and the sale of our UEPS products or services to that customer tends to be long and may be subject to delays which may have an impact on our revenues.

The period between our initial contact with a potential customer and the purchase of our UEPS products and services is often long and subject to delays associated with the budgeting, approval and competitive evaluation processes that frequently accompany significant capital expenditures. A lengthy sales cycle may have an impact on the timing of our revenues, which may cause our quarterly operating results to fall below investor expectations. A customer’s decision to purchase our products and services is often discretionary, involves a significant commitment of resources, and is influenced by customer budgetary cycles. To sell our products and services successfully we generally must educate our potential customers regarding the uses and benefits of our products and services, which can require the expenditure of significant time and resources; however, there can be no assurance that this significant expenditure of time and resources will result in actual sales of our products and services.

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Our proprietary rights may not adequately protect our technologies.

Our success depends in part on our obtaining and maintaining patent, trade secret, copyright and trademark protection of our technologies in the United States and other jurisdictions as well as successfully enforcing this intellectual property and defending this intellectual property against third-party challenges. We will only be able to protect our technologies from unauthorized use by third parties to the extent that valid and enforceable intellectual property protections, such as patents or trade secrets, cover them. In particular, we place considerable emphasis on obtaining patent and trade secret protection for significant new technologies, products and processes. Furthermore, the degree of future protection of our proprietary rights is uncertain because legal means afford only limited protection and may not adequately protect our rights or permit us to gain or keep our competitive advantage.

We cannot predict the breadth of claims that may be allowed or enforced in our patents. For example, we might not have been the first to make the inventions covered by each of our patents and patent applications or to file patent applications and it is possible that none of our pending patent applications will result in issued patents. It is possible that others may independently develop similar or alternative technologies. Also, our issued patents may not provide a basis for commercially viable products, or may not provide us with any competitive advantages or may be challenged, invalidated or circumvented by third parties.

We also rely on trade secrets to protect our technology, especially where we believe patent protection is not appropriate or obtainable. However, trade secrets are difficult to protect. We have confidentiality agreements with employees, and consultants to protect our trade secrets and proprietary know-how. These agreements may be breached and or may not have adequate remedies for such breach. While we use reasonable efforts to protect our trade secrets, our employees, consultants or others may unintentionally or willfully disclose our information to competitors. If we were to enforce a claim that a third party had illegally obtained and was using our trade secrets, our enforcement efforts would be expensive and time consuming, and the outcome would be unpredictable. Moreover, if our competitors independently develop equivalent knowledge, methods and know-how, it will be more difficult for us to enforce our rights and our business could be harmed. If we are not able to defend the patent or trade secret protection position of our technologies, then we will not be able to exclude competitors from developing or marketing competing technologies.

We also rely on trademarks to establish a market identity for some of our products. To maintain the value of our trademarks, we might have to file lawsuits against third parties to prevent them from using trademarks confusingly similar to or dilutive of our registered or unregistered trademarks. Also, we might not obtain registrations for our pending trademark applications, and might have to defend our registered trademark and pending trademark applications from challenge by third parties.

Defending our intellectual property rights or defending ourselves in infringement suits that may be brought against us is expensive and time-consuming and may not be successful.

Litigation to enforce our patents, trademarks or other intellectual property rights or to protect our trade secrets could result in substantial costs and may not be successful. Any loss of, or inability to protect, intellectual property in our technology could diminish our competitive advantage and also seriously harm our business. In addition, the laws of certain foreign countries may not protect our intellectual property rights to the same extent as do the laws in countries where we currently have patent protection. Our means of protecting our intellectual property rights in countries where we currently have patent or trademark protection, or any other country in which we operate, may not be adequate to fully protect our intellectual property rights. Similarly, if third parties claim that we infringe their intellectual property rights, we may be required to incur significant costs and devote substantial resources to the defense of such claims. We may be required to discontinue using and selling any infringing technology and services, to expend resources to develop non-infringing technology or to purchase licenses or pay royalties for other technology. In addition, if we are unsuccessful in defending any such third-party claims, we could suffer costly judgments and injunctions that could materially adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition.

Our strategy of partnering with companies outside South Africa may not be successful.

In order for us to expand our operations into foreign markets, it may be necessary for us to establish partnering arrangements with companies outside South Africa, such as the one we have co-established in Namibia and our non-controlling investments in Nigeria and with MobiKwik in India. The success of these endeavors is, however, subject to a number of factors over which we have little or no control, such as finding suitable partners with the appropriate financial, business and technical backing and continued governmental support for planned implementations. In some countries, finding suitable partners and obtaining the appropriate support from the government involved may take a number of years before we can commence implementation. Some of these partnering arrangements may take the form of joint ventures in which we receive a non-controlling interest. Non-controlling ownership carries with it numerous risks, including dependence on partners to provide knowledge of local market conditions and to facilitate the acquisition of any necessary licenses and permits, as well as the inability to control the joint venture vehicle and to direct its policies and strategies.

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Such a lack of control could result in the loss of all or part of our investment in such entities. In addition, our foreign partners may have different business methods and customs which may be unfamiliar to us and with which we disagree. Our joint venture partners may not be able to implement our business model in new areas as efficiently and quickly as we have been able to do in South Africa. Furthermore, limitations imposed on our South African subsidiaries by South African exchange control regulations, as well as limitations imposed on us by the Investment Company Act of 1940, may limit our ability to establish partnerships or entities in which we do not obtain a controlling interest.

We may have difficulty managing our growth.

We continue to experience growth, both in the scope of our operations and size of our organization. This growth is placing significant demands on our management. Continued growth would increase the challenges involved in implementing appropriate operational and financial systems, expanding our technical and sales and marketing infrastructure and capabilities, providing adequate training and supervision to maintain high quality standards, and preserving our culture and values. International growth, in particular, means that we must become familiar and comply with complex laws and regulations in other countries, especially laws relating to taxation.

Additionally, continued growth will place significant additional demands on our management and our financial and operational resources, and will require that we continue to develop and improve our operational, financial and other internal controls. If we cannot scale and manage our business appropriately, we will not experience our projected growth and our financial results may suffer.

We pre-fund certain merchant and customer payments in South Africa, South Korea and Botswana and a significant level of payment defaults by these merchants or customers would adversely affect us.

We pre-fund social welfare grants through the merchants who participate in our merchant acquiring system in the South African provinces where we operate. We also pre-fund the settlement of funds to certain customers in South Korea and pre-fund our customer that utilizes our UEPS system to pay old age grants in Botswana. These pre-funding obligations expose us to the risk of default by these merchants and customers. Although we have not experienced any material defaults by merchants or customers in the return of pre-funded amounts to us, we cannot guarantee that material defaults will not occur in the future. A material level of merchant or customer defaults could have a material adverse effect on us, our financial position and results of operations.

We may incur material losses in connection with our distribution of cash to recipient cardholders of social welfare grants in South Africa.

Many social welfare recipient cardholders use our services to access cash using their smart cards. We use armored vehicles and our own fixed ATM infrastructure to deliver large amounts of cash to rural areas across South Africa to enable these welfare recipient cardholders to receive this cash. In some cases, we also store the cash that will be delivered by the armored vehicles in depots overnight or over the weekend to facilitate delivery to these rural areas. We cannot insure against certain risks of loss or theft of cash from our delivery vehicles, ATMs or depots and we will therefore bear the full cost of certain uninsured losses or theft in connection with the cash handling process, and such losses could materially and adversely affect our financial condition, cash flows and results of operations. We have not incurred any material losses resulting from cash distribution in recent years, but there is no assurance that we will not incur material losses in the future.

We depend upon third-party suppliers, making us vulnerable to supply shortages and price fluctuations, which could harm our business.

We obtain our smart cards, ATMs, POS devices and the other hardware we use in our business from a limited number of suppliers, and do not manufacture this equipment ourselves. We generally do not have long-term agreements with our manufacturers or component suppliers. If our suppliers become unwilling or unable to provide us with adequate supplies of parts or products when we need them, or if they increase their prices, we may not be able to find alternative sources in a timely manner and could be faced with a critical shortage. This could harm our ability to implement new systems and cause our revenues to decline. Even if we are able to secure alternative sources in a timely manner, our costs could increase. A supply interruption or an increase in demand beyond current suppliers’ capabilities could harm our ability to distribute our equipment and thus, to acquire a new source of customers who use our UEPS technology. Any interruption in the supply of the hardware necessary to operate our technology, or our inability to obtain substitute equipment at acceptable prices in a timely manner, could impair our ability to meet the demand of our customers, which would have an adverse effect on our business.

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Shipments of our electronic payment systems may be delayed by factors outside of our control, which can harm our reputation and our relationships with our customers.

The shipment of payment systems requires us or our manufacturers, distributors or other agents to obtain customs or other government certifications and approvals and, on occasion, to submit to physical inspection of our systems in transit. Failure to satisfy these requirements, and the very process of trying to satisfy them, can lead to lengthy delays in the delivery of our solutions to our direct or indirect customers. Delays and unreliable delivery by us may harm our reputation and our relationships with our customers.

Our Smart Life business exposes us to risks typically experienced by life assurance companies.

Smart Life is a life insurance company and exposes us to risks typically experienced by life assurance companies. Some of these risks include the extent to which we are able to continue to reinsure our risks at acceptable costs, reinsurer counterparty risk, maintaining regulatory capital adequacy, solvency and liquidity requirements, our ability to price our insurance products appropriately, the risk that actual claims experience may exceed our estimates, the ability to recover policy premiums from our customers and the competitiveness of the South African insurance market. If we are unable to maintain our desired level of reinsurance at prices that we consider acceptable, we would have to either accept an increase in our exposure risk or reduce our insurance writings. If our reinsurers are unable to meet their commitments to us in a timely manner, or at all, we may be unable to discharge our obligations under our insurance contracts. As such, we are exposed to counterparty, including credit, risk of these reinsurers. Our product pricing includes long-term assumptions regarding investment returns, mortality, morbidity, persistency and operating costs and expenses of the business. Using the wrong assumptions to price our insurance products could materially and adversely affect our financial position, results of operations and cash flows.

If our actual claims experience is higher than our estimates, our financial position, results of operations and cash flows could be adversely affected. Finally, the South African insurance industry is highly competitive. Many of our competitors are well-established, represented nationally and market similar products and we may not be able to effectively penetrate the South African insurance market.

Risks Relating to Operating in South Africa and Other Foreign Markets

If we do not achieve applicable broad-based black economic empowerment objectives in our South African businesses, we risk losing our government and private contracts. In addition, it is possible that we may be required to increase black shareholding of our company in a manner that could dilute your ownership.

The legislative framework for the promotion of broad-based black economic empowerment, or BEE, in South Africa has been established through the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act, No. 53 of 2003, as amended in 2013, and amended BEE codes of good practice, or BEE Codes, the sector-specific codes of good practice, or Sector Codes, and sector-specific transformation charters, or Transformation Charters, published pursuant thereto. Sector Codes are sector-specific codes of good practice that are aligned with the BEE Codes and share the same status as the BEE Codes which were initially published by the South African government in February 2007. Sector Codes are fully binding between and among businesses operating in an industry. Achievement of BEE objectives is measured by a scorecard which establishes a weighting for the various components of BEE. Scorecards are independently reviewed by accredited BEE verification agencies which issue a certificate that presents an entity’s BEE Recognition Level, or BEE status.

The BEE Codes were reviewed by the South African Department of Trade and Industry, or dti, and a new set of BEE Codes were promulgated in October 2013. The new BEE Codes came into effect on May 1, 2015, and have different requirements and emphasis to the old codes of good practice. Furthermore, on May 15, 2015, the dti issued a Notice of Clarification which further extended the transitional period for the alignment of Sector Codes with the new BEE Codes. The dti stated in its notice that it would consider repealing any Sector Codes that are not aligned to a date yet to be announced.

Certain of our South African businesses are subject to either the Information and Communications Technology Sector Code, or ICT Sector Code, or the Financial Services Sector Code. The ICT Sector Code has been amended and aligned with the new BEE Codes, and a new ICT Sector Code was promulgated on November 7, 2016. In November 2012, the South African government promulgated the Financial Services Code. The Financial Services Code is in the process of being amended to align it with the BEE Codes and the amendments have not yet been finalized.

Some of our businesses will have to adhere to these amended Sector Codes, and in the case of the Financial Sector Codes, only once the amendment is gazetted. Compliance with the requirements of the amended ICT Sector Codes and the amended Financial Sector Codes, may negatively affect our future BEE status.

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We have taken a number of actions as a company to increase empowerment of black South Africans. However, it is possible that these actions may not be sufficient to enable us to achieve applicable BEE objectives. In that event, in order to avoid risking the loss of our government and private contracts, we may have to seek to comply through other means, including by selling or placing additional shares of Net1 or of our South African subsidiaries to black South Africans. Such sales of shares could have a dilutive impact of your ownership interest, which could cause the market price of our stock to decline.

We expect that our BEE status will be important for us to remain competitive in the South African marketplace and we continually seek ways to improve our BEE status, especially the equity component of our BEE status. For instance, in April 2014, we implemented a BEE transaction pursuant to which we issued 4.4 million shares of our common stock to our BEE partners for ZAR 60.00 per share, which represented a 25% discount to the market price of our shares at the time that we negotiated the transaction. We entered into this transaction to improve the equity component of our BEE status. We provided funding to the BEE partners in order for them to buy these shares from us. In June 2014, and in accordance with the terms of agreements, we repurchased approximately 2.4 million of these shares of our common stock in order for the BEE partners to repay the loans we provided to them. Furthermore, in August 2014, we entered into a Subscription and Sale of Shares Agreement with Business Venture Investments No 1567 Proprietary Limited (RF), or BVI, one of our BEE partners, in preparation for any new potential SASSA tender. Pursuant to the agreement, we repurchased BVI’s remaining shares of Net1 common stock and BVI subscribed for new ordinary shares of CPS, representing approximately 12.5% of CPS’ ordinary shares outstanding after the subscription.

It is possible that we may find it necessary to issue additional shares to improve our BEE status. If we enter into further BEE transactions that involve the issuance of equity, we cannot predict what the dilutive effect of such a transaction would be on your ownership or how it would affect the market price of our stock.

Fluctuations in the value of the South African rand have had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on our reported results of operations, which may make it difficult to evaluate our business performance between reporting periods and may also adversely affect our stock price.

The South African rand, or ZAR, is the primary operating currency for our business operations while our financial results are reported in U.S. dollars. This means that as long as the ZAR remains our primary operating currency, depreciation in the ZAR against the U.S. dollar, and to a lesser extent, the South Korean won against the U.S. dollar, would negatively impact our reported revenue and net income, while a strengthening of the ZAR and the South Korean won would have the opposite effect. Depreciation in the ZAR may negatively impact the prices at which our stock trades. The U.S. dollar/ZAR exchange rate has historically been volatile and we expect this volatility to continue. We provide detailed information about historical exchange rates in Item 7—“Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Currency Exchange Rate Information.”

Due to the significant fluctuation in the value of the ZAR and its impact on our reported results, you may find it difficult to compare our results of operations between financial reporting periods even though we provide supplemental information about our results of operations determined on a ZAR basis. This difficulty may increase as we expand our business internationally and record additional revenue and expenses in the euro and other currencies. It may also have a negative impact on our stock price.

We generally do not engage in any currency hedging transactions intended to reduce the effect of fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates on our results of operations, other than economic hedging relating to our inventory purchases which are settled in U.S. dollars or euros. We have used forward contracts in order to hedge our economic exposure to the ZAR/U.S. dollar and ZAR/euro exchange rate fluctuations from these foreign currency transactions. We cannot guarantee that we will enter into hedging transactions in the future or, if we do, that these transactions will successfully protect us against currency fluctuations.

South Africa’s high levels of poverty, unemployment and crime may increase our costs and impair our ability to maintain a qualified workforce.

While South Africa has a highly developed financial and legal infrastructure, it also has high levels of crime and unemployment, relative to peer countries in Africa and other emerging economies, and there are significant differences in the level of economic and social development among its people, with large parts of the population, particularly in the rural areas, having limited access to adequate education, healthcare, housing and other basic services, including water and electricity. In addition, South Africa has a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. Government policies aimed at alleviating and redressing the disadvantages suffered by the majority of citizens under previous governments may increase our costs and reduce our profitability, all of which could negatively affect our business. These problems may prompt emigration of skilled workers, hinder investment into South Africa and impede economic growth. As a result, we may have difficulties attracting and retaining qualified employees.

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We may not be able to effectively and efficiently manage the electricity supply disruptions in South Africa which could adversely affect our results of operations, financial position, cash flows and future growth.

Our businesses in South Africa are dependent on electricity generated and supplied by the state-owned utility, Eskom, in order to operate. In recent years, Eskom has been unable to generate and supply the amount of electricity required by South Africans, and the entire country experienced significant and largely unpredictable electricity supply disruptions. Eskom has implemented a number of short- and long-term mitigation plans to correct these issues and the number of supply disruptions has decreased since calendar 2016.

As part of our business continuity programs, we have installed back-up diesel generators in order for us to continue to operate our core data processing facilities in Cape Town and Johannesburg in the event of intermittent disruptions to our electricity supply. We have to perform regular monitoring and maintenance of these generators as well as sourcing and managing diesel fuel levels. We may also be required to replace these generators on a more frequent basis due to the additional burden placed on them.

Our results of operations, financial position, cash flows and future growth could be adversely affected if Eskom is unable to commission new electricity-generating power stations in accordance with its plans, or at all, or if we are unable to effectively and efficiently test, maintain, source fuel for and replace our generators.

The economy of South Africa is exposed to high inflation and interest rates which could increase our operating costs and thereby reduce our profitability.

The economy of South Africa in the past has been, and in the future may continue to be, characterized by rates of inflation and interest rates that are substantially higher than those prevailing in the United States and other highly developed economies. High rates of inflation could increase our South African-based costs and decrease our operating margins. Although higher interest rates would increase the amount of income we earn on our cash balances, they would also adversely affect our ability to obtain additional cost-effective debt financing in South Africa.

South African exchange control regulations could hinder our ability to make foreign investments and obtain foreign-denominated financing.

South Africa’s exchange control regulations restrict the export of capital from South Africa, the Republic of Namibia and the Kingdoms of Lesotho and Swaziland, known collectively as the Common Monetary Area, without the prior approval of SARB. While the South African government has relaxed exchange controls in recent years, it is difficult to predict whether or how it will further relax or abolish exchange control measures in the foreseeable future.

Although Net1 is a U.S. corporation and is not itself subject to South African exchange control regulations, these regulations do restrict the ability of our South African subsidiaries to raise and deploy capital outside the Common Monetary Area, to borrow money in currencies other than the South African rand and to hold foreign currency. Exchange control restrictions may also affect the ability of these subsidiaries to pay dividends to Net1 unless the affected subsidiary can show that any payment of such dividend will not place it in an over-borrowed position. As of June 30, 2017, approximately 56% of our cash and cash equivalents were held by our South African subsidiaries. Exchange control regulations could make it difficult for our South African subsidiaries to: (i) export capital from South Africa; (ii) hold foreign currency or incur indebtedness denominated in foreign currencies without the approval of SARB; (iii) acquire an interest in a foreign venture without the approval of SARB and first having complied with the investment criteria of SARB; or (iv) repatriate to South Africa profits of foreign operations. These regulations could also limit our ability to utilize profits of one foreign business to finance operations of a different foreign business.

Under current exchange control regulations, SARB approval would be required for any acquisition of our company which would involve payment to our South African shareholders of any consideration other than South African rand. This restriction could limit our management in its ability to consider strategic options and thus, our shareholders may not be able to realize the premium over the current trading price of our shares.

Most of South Africa’s major industries are unionized, and the majority of employees belong to trade unions. We face the risk of disruption from labor disputes and new South African labor laws.

Trade unions have had a significant impact on the collective bargaining process as well as on social and political reform in South Africa in general. Although only approximately 1% percent of our South African workforce is unionized and we have not experienced any labor disruptions in recent years, such labor disruptions may occur in the future. In addition, developments in South African labor laws may increase our costs or alter our relationship with our employees and trade unions, which may have an adverse effect on us, our financial condition and our operations.

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Operating in South Africa and other emerging markets subjects us to greater risks than those we would face if we operated in more developed markets.

Emerging markets such as South Africa, as well as some of the other markets into which we have recently begun to expand, including African countries outside South Africa, South America, South and Southeast Asia and Central and Eastern Europe, are subject to greater risks than more developed markets.

While we focus our business primarily on emerging markets because that is where we perceive to be the greatest opportunities to market our products and services successfully, the political, economic and market conditions in many of these markets present risks that could make it more difficult to operate our business successfully.

Some of these risks include:

Many of these countries and regions are in various stages of developing institutions and political, legal and regulatory systems that are characteristic of democracies. However, institutions in these countries and regions may not yet be as firmly established as they are in democracies in the developed world. Many of these countries and regions are also in the process of transitioning to a market economy and, as a result, are experiencing changes in their economies and their government policies that can affect our investments in these countries and regions. Moreover, the procedural safeguards of the new legal and regulatory regimes in these countries and regions are still being developed and, therefore, existing laws and regulations may be applied inconsistently. In some circumstances, it may not be possible to obtain the legal remedies provided under those laws and regulations in a timely manner.

As the political, economic and legal environments remain subject to continuous development, investors in these countries and regions face uncertainty as to the security of their investments. Any unexpected changes in the political or economic conditions in these or neighboring countries or others in the region may have a material adverse effect on the international investments that we have made or may make in the future, which may in turn have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, cash flows and financial condition.

Our KSNET operations may be adversely affected by tension in the Korean peninsula.

Our KSNET operations contributed approximately 25% and 13% of our revenue and operating income, respectively, for our 2017 fiscal year. There has been recent tension on the Korean peninsula and a concern about potential acts of military aggression or cyber-attacks. Because KSNET is a transaction processor, its operations are dependent on continuing high levels of consumer activity and the availability of data communication infrastructure. Acts of military aggression in the Korean peninsula, other hostile acts or economic weakness that reduces spending by South Korean consumers is likely to materially and adversely impact our KSNET operations as well as our business, operating results, cash flows and financial condition. If this were to occur, we might be unable to comply with the debt covenants contained in our Korean debt facility, which could result in default and acceleration of our indebtedness. Furthermore, we might not be able to obtain waivers of default or to refinance the debt with another lender and, as a result, our business and financial condition would suffer.

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Risks Relating to Government Regulation

The South African National Credit Regulator has applied to cancel the registration of our subsidiary, Moneyline Financial Services (Pty) Ltd, as a credit provider. If the registration is cancelled, we will not be able to provide UEPS-based loans to our customers, which would harm our business.

Moneyline provides microloans to our UEPS/EMV cardholders. Moneyline is a registered credit provider under the South African National Credit Act, or NCA, and is required to comply with the NCA in the operation of its lending business. In September 2014, the South African National Credit Regulator, or NCR, applied to the National Consumer Tribunal to cancel Moneyline’s registration, based on an investigation concluded by the NCR.

The NCR has alleged, among other things, that Moneyline contravened the NCA by including child support grants and foster child grants in the affordability assessments performed by Moneyline prior to granting credit to these borrowers, and that the procedures followed and documentation maintained by Moneyline are not in accordance with the NCA. We believe that Moneyline has conducted its business in compliance with NCA and we are opposing the NCR’s application. However, if the NCR’s application is successful, Moneyline would be prohibited from operating its microlending business, which could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations and cash flows.

We are required to comply with certain U.S. laws and regulations, including economic and trade sanctions, which could adversely impact our future growth.

We are subject to U.S. and other trade controls, economic sanctions and similar laws and regulations, including those in the jurisdictions where we operate. Our failure to comply with these laws and regulations could subject us to civil, criminal and administrative penalties and harm our reputation.

Doing business on a worldwide basis requires us to comply with the laws and regulations of various foreign jurisdictions. These laws and regulations place restrictions on our operations, trade practices, partners and investment decisions. In particular, our operations are subject to U.S. and foreign trade control laws and regulations, including various export controls and economic sanctions programs, such as those administered by OFAC, as well as European sanctions. We monitor compliance in accordance with the 10 principles as set out in the United Nations Global Compact Principles, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development recommendations relating to corruption, and the International Labor Organization Protocol in terms of certain of the items to be monitored. As a result of doing business in foreign countries and with foreign partners, we are exposed to a heightened risk of violating trade control laws as well as sanctions regulations.

Economic sanctions programs restrict our business dealings with certain sanctioned countries, persons and entities. In addition, because we act through dealers and distributors, we face the risk that our dealers, distributors and customers might further distribute our products to a sanctioned person or entity, or an ultimate end-user in a sanctioned country, which might subject us to an investigation concerning compliance with OFAC or other sanctions regulations.

Violations of trade control laws and sanctions regulations are punishable by civil penalties, including fines, denial of export privileges, injunctions, asset seizures, debarment from government contracts and revocations or restrictions of licenses, as well as criminal fines and imprisonment. We have developed policies and procedures as part of a company-wide compliance program that is designed to assist our compliance with applicable U.S. and international trade control laws and regulations, including trade controls and sanctions programs administered by OFAC, and provide regular training to our employees to comply with these laws and regulations. However, there can be no assurance that all of our employees, consultants, partners, agents or other associated persons will not take actions in violation of our policies and these laws and regulations, or that our policies and procedures will effectively prevent us from violating these regulations in every transaction in which we may engage, or provide a defense to any alleged violation. In particular, we may be held liable for the actions that our local, strategic or joint venture partners take inside or outside of the United States, even though our partners may not be subject to these laws. Such a violation, even if our policies prohibit it, could materially and adversely affect our reputation, business, results of operations and financial condition. Our continued international expansion, including in developing countries, and our development of new partnerships and joint venture relationships worldwide, could increase the risk of OFAC violations in the future.

We are required to comply with anti-corruption laws and regulations, including the FCPA and U.K. Bribery Act, in the jurisdictions in which we operate our business, which could adversely impact our future growth.

The FCPA prohibits us from providing anything of value to foreign officials for the purposes of obtaining or retaining business, or securing any improper business advantage. It also requires us to keep books and records that accurately and fairly reflect our transactions. As part of our business, we may deal with state-owned business enterprises, the employees of which are considered foreign officials for purposes of the FCPA.

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In addition, we have to comply with the U.K. Bribery Act, or the U.K. Bribery Act, which includes provisions that extend beyond bribery of foreign public officials and also apply to transactions with individuals not employed by a government. The provisions of the U.K. Bribery Act are also more onerous than the FCPA in a number of other respects, including jurisdiction, non-exemption of facilitation payments and penalties. Some of the international locations in which we operate, lack a developed legal system and have higher than normal levels of corruption.

Any failure by us to adopt appropriate compliance procedures and ensure that our employees, agents and business partners comply with the FCPA could subject us to substantial penalties. In addition, the requirement that we comply with the FCPA could put us at a competitive disadvantage with companies that are not required to comply with the FCPA or could otherwise harm our business. For example, in many emerging markets, there may be significant levels of official corruption, and thus, bribery of public officials may be a commonly accepted cost of doing business. Our refusal to engage in illegal behavior, such as paying bribes, may result in us not being able to obtain business that we might otherwise have been able to secure or possibly even result in unlawful, selective or arbitrary action being taken against us by foreign officials.

Our current and potential competitors may use U.S. laws and regulations, including the FCPA, to disrupt our business operations and harm our reputation in the territories in which we operate or in which we intend to expand into. For instance, as we have previously reported, in November 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice commenced an investigation into whether we violated the FCPA and other U.S. federal criminal laws by engaging in a scheme to make corrupt payments to officials of the South Africa government in connection with securing our 2012 SASSA contract and whether we violated federal securities laws in connection with statements made by us in our SEC filings regarding this contract. The investigations commenced as a result of reports made to the relevant U.S. authorities by a losing bidder to the 2012 SASSA contract. While these investigations have all been concluded with no adverse findings against us, during the course of the investigations, management’s time was diverted from other matters relating to our business and we suffered harm to our business reputation. Furthermore, in fiscal 2013, the FSB suspended Smart Life’s insurance license. Our management has to spend a disproportionate amount of time explaining the circumstances surrounding, and the result of the investigations, when engaging new business partners, shareholders or regulators.

Violations of anti-corruption laws and regulations are punishable by civil penalties, including fines, as well as criminal fines and imprisonment. We have developed policies and procedures as part of a company-wide compliance program that is designed to assist our compliance with applicable U.S. and international anti-corruption laws and regulations, and provide regular training to our employees to comply with these laws and regulations. However, there can be no assurance that all of our employees, consultants, partners, agents or other associated persons will not take actions in violation of our policies and these laws and regulations, or that our policies and procedures will effectively prevent us from violating these regulations in every transaction in which we may engage, or provide a defense to any alleged violation. In particular, we may be held liable for the actions that our local, strategic or joint venture partners take inside or outside of the United States, even though our partners may not be subject to these laws. Such a violation, even if our policies prohibit it, could materially and adversely affect our reputation, business, results of operations and financial condition.

Since less developed countries present some of the best opportunities for us to expand our business internationally, restrictions against entering into transactions with those foreign countries, as well as with certain entities and individuals in those countries, can adversely affect our ability to grow our business.

Changes in current South African government regulations relating to social welfare grants could adversely affect our revenues and cash flows.

We derive a substantial portion of our current business from the distribution of social welfare grants in South Africa and the provision of financial services to social grant recipients. Because social welfare eligibility and grant amounts are regulated by the South African government, any changes to or reinterpretations of the government regulations relating to social welfare may result in the non-renewal or reduction of grants for certain individuals, or a determination that currently eligible social welfare grant recipient cardholders are no longer eligible. If any of these changes were to occur, the number of grants we distribute could decrease which could result in a reduction of our revenue and cash flows.

We do not have a South African banking license and, therefore, we provide our social welfare grant distribution and EasyPay Everywhere solution through an arrangement with a third-party bank, which limits our control over this business and the economic benefit we derive from it. If this arrangement were to terminate, we would not be able to operate our social welfare grant distribution and EasyPay Everywhere business without alternate means of access to a banking license.

The South African retail banking market is highly regulated. Under current law and regulations, our South African social welfare grant distribution and EasyPay Everywhere business activities requires us to be registered as a bank in South Africa or to have access to an existing banking license.

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We are not currently so registered, but we have an agreement with Grindrod Bank that enables us to implement our social welfare grant distribution and EasyPay Everywhere solution in compliance with the relevant laws and regulations. If the agreement were to be terminated, we would not be able to operate these services unless we were able to obtain access to a banking license through alternate means. We are also dependent on Grindrod Bank to defend us against attacks from the other South African banks who may regard the rapid market acceptance of our UEPS/EMV product with biometric verification as disruptive to their funds transfer or other businesses and may seek governmental or other regulatory intervention. Furthermore, we have to comply with the strict anti-money laundering and customer identification regulations of the SARB when we open new bank accounts for our customers and when they transact. Failure to effectively implement and monitor these regulations may result in significant fines or prosecution of Grindrod Bank and ourselves.

In addition, the South African Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act, 2002, requires persons who act as intermediaries between financial product suppliers and consumers in South Africa to register as financial service providers. Smart Life was granted an Authorized Financial Service Provider, or FSP, license on June 9, 2015, and Moneyline Financial Services (Pty) Ltd and Net1 Mobile Solutions (Pty) Ltd were each granted FSP licenses on July 11, 2017. If our FSP licenses are cancelled, we may be stopped from continuing our financial services businesses in South Africa.

Our payment processing businesses are subject to substantial governmental regulation and may be adversely affected by liability under, or any future inability to comply with, existing or future regulations or requirements.

Our payment processing activities are subject to extensive regulation. Compliance with the requirements under these various regulatory regimes may cause us to incur significant additional costs and failure to comply with such requirements could result in the shutdown of the non-complying facility, the imposition of liens, fines and/or civil or criminal liability.

We may be subject to regulations regarding privacy, data use and/or security which could adversely affect our business.

We are subject to regulations in a number of the countries in which we operate relating to the collection, use, retention, security and transfer of personally identifiable information about the people who use our products and services, in particular, “Know Your Customer”, personal financial and health information. New laws in this area have been passed by several jurisdictions, and other jurisdictions are considering imposing additional restrictions. The interpretation and application of user data protection laws are in a state of flux. These laws may be interpreted and applied inconsistently from country to country and our current data protection policies and practices may not be consistent with those interpretations and applications. Complying with these varying requirements could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices in a manner adverse to our business.

Any failure, or perceived failure, by us to comply with any regulatory requirements or international privacy or consumer protection-related laws and regulations could result in proceedings or actions against us by governmental entities or others, subject us to significant penalties and negative publicity and adversely affect us. In addition, as noted above, we are subject to the possibility of security breaches, which themselves may result in a violation of these laws.

Risks Relating to our Common Stock

Our stock price has been and may continue to be volatile.

Our stock price has experienced recent significant volatility. During the 2017 fiscal year, our stock price ranged from a low of $8.37 to a high of $13.53. We expect that the trading price of our common stock may continue to be volatile as a result of a number of factors, including, but not limited to the following:

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The put right we have agreed to grant to the IFC Investors on the occurrence of certain triggering events may have adverse impacts on us.

In May 2016, we issued an aggregate of 9,984,311 shares of our common stock to the IFC Investors. We granted to the IFC Investors certain rights, including the right to require us to repurchase any shares we have sold to the IFC Investors upon the occurrence of specified triggering events, which we refer to as a “put right.” Events triggering the put right relate to (1) us being the subject of a governmental complaint alleging, a court judgment finding or an indictment alleging that we (a) engaged in specified corrupt, fraudulent, coercive, collusive or obstructive practices; (b) entered into transactions with targets of economic sanctions; or (c) failed to operate our business in compliance with anti-money laundering or anti-terrorism laws; or (2) we reject a bona fide offer to acquire all of our outstanding shares at a time when we have in place or implement a shareholder rights plan, or adopt a shareholder rights plan triggered by a beneficial ownership threshold of less than twenty percent. The put price per share will be the higher of the price per share paid to us by the IFC Investors and the volume-weighted average price per share prevailing for the 60 trading days preceding the triggering event, except that with respect a put right triggered by rejection of a bona fide offer, the put price per share will be the highest price offered by the offeror. If a put triggering event occurs, it could adversely impact our liquidity and capital resources. In addition, the existence of the put right could also affect whether or on what terms a third party might in the future offer to purchase our company. Our response to any such offer could also be complicated, delayed or otherwise influenced by the existence of the put right.

A majority of our common stock is beneficially owned by a small number of shareholders. The interests of these shareholders may conflict with those of our other shareholders.

There is a concentration of ownership of our outstanding common stock because approximately 47% of our outstanding common stock is owned by three shareholders. Based on their most recent SEC filings disclosing ownership of our shares, IFC Investors, Allan Gray Proprietary Limited, and International Value Advisers, LLC, or IVA, beneficially owned approximately 18%, 16% and 13% of our outstanding common stock, respectively.

The interests of the IFC Investors, Allan Gray and IVA, may be different from or conflict with the interests of our other shareholders. As a result of the ownership by the IFC Investors, Allan Gray and IVA, they will be able, if they act together, to significantly influence our management and affairs and all matters requiring shareholder approval, including the election of directors and approval of significant corporate transactions. This concentration of ownership may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change of control of our company, thus depriving shareholders of a premium for their shares, or facilitating a change of control that other shareholders may oppose.

We may seek to raise additional financing by issuing new securities with terms or rights superior to those of our shares of common stock, which could adversely affect the market price of our shares of common stock.

We may require additional financing to fund future operations, including expansion in current and new markets, programming development and acquisition, capital costs and the costs of any necessary implementation of technological innovations or alternative technologies, or to fund acquisitions. Because of the exposure to market risks associated with economies in emerging markets, we may not be able to obtain financing on favorable terms or at all.

If we raise additional funds by issuing equity securities, the percentage ownership of our current shareholders will be reduced, and the holders of the new equity securities may have rights superior to those of the holders of shares of common stock, which could adversely affect the market price and voting power of shares of common stock. If we raise additional funds by issuing debt securities, the holders of these debt securities would similarly have some rights senior to those of the holders of shares of common stock, and the terms of these debt securities could impose restrictions on operations and create a significant interest expense for us.

We may have difficulty raising necessary capital to fund operations or acquisitions as a result of market price volatility for our shares of common stock.

In recent years, the securities markets in the United States have experienced a high level of price and volume volatility, and the market price of securities of many companies have experienced wide fluctuations that have not necessarily been related to the operations, performance, underlying asset values or prospects of such companies. For these reasons, our shares of common stock can also be expected to be subject to volatility resulting from purely market forces over which we will have no control. If our business development plans are successful, we may require additional financing to continue to develop and exploit existing and new technologies, to expand into new markets and to make acquisitions, all of which may be dependent upon our ability to obtain financing through debt and equity or other means.

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Issuances of significant amounts of stock in the future could potentially dilute your equity ownership and adversely affect the price of our common stock.

We believe that it is necessary to maintain a sufficient number of available authorized shares of our common stock in order to provide us with the flexibility to issue shares for business purposes that may arise from time to time. For example, we could sell additional shares to raise capital to fund our operations or to acquire other businesses, issue shares in a BEE transaction, issue additional shares under our stock incentive plan or declare a stock dividend. Our board may authorize the issuance of additional shares of common stock without notice to, or further action by, our shareholders, unless shareholder approval is required by law or the rules of the NASDAQ Stock Market. The issuance of additional shares could dilute the equity ownership of our current shareholders. In addition, additional shares that we issue would likely be freely tradable which could adversely affect the trading price of our common stock.

Failure to maintain effective internal control over financial reporting in accordance with Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, especially over companies that we may acquire, could have a material adverse effect on our business and stock price.

Under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or Sarbanes, we are required to furnish a management certification and auditor attestation regarding the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. We are required to report, among other things, control deficiencies that constitute a “material weakness” or changes in internal control that materially affect, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, internal control over financial reporting. A “material weakness” is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis.

The requirement to evaluate and report on our internal controls also applies to companies that we acquire. Some of these companies may not be required to comply with Sarbanes prior to the time we acquire them. The integration of these acquired companies into our internal control over financial reporting could require significant time and resources from our management and other personnel and may increase our compliance costs. If we fail to successfully integrate the operations of these acquired companies into our internal control over financial reporting, our internal control over financial reporting may not be effective.

While we continue to dedicate resources and management time to ensuring that we have effective controls over financial reporting, failure to achieve and maintain an effective internal control environment could have a material adverse effect on the market’s perception of our business and our stock price.

You may experience difficulties in effecting service of legal process, enforcing foreign judgments or bringing original actions based upon U.S. laws, including the federal securities laws or other foreign laws, against us or certain of our directors and officers and experts.

While Net1 is incorporated in the state of Florida, United States, the company is headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa and substantially all of the company’s assets are located outside the United States. In addition, the majority of Net1’s directors and all its officers reside outside of the United States and the majority of our experts, including our independent registered public accountants, are based in South Africa.

As a result, even though you could effect service of legal process upon Net1, as a Florida corporation, in the United States, you may not be able to collect any judgment obtained against Net1 in the United States, including any judgment based on the civil liability provisions of the U.S. federal securities laws, because substantially all of our assets are located outside the United States. Moreover, it may not be possible for you to effect service of legal process upon the majority of our directors and officers or upon our experts within the United States or elsewhere outside South Africa and any judgment obtained against any of our foreign directors, officers and experts in the United States, including one based on the civil liability provisions of the U.S. federal securities laws, may not be collectible in the United States and may not be enforced by a South African court.

South Africa is not a party to any treaties regarding the enforcement of foreign commercial judgments, as opposed to foreign arbitral awards. Accordingly, a foreign judgment is not directly enforceable in South Africa, but constitutes a cause of action which may be enforced by South African courts provided that:

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It has been the policy of South African courts to award compensation for the loss or damage actually sustained by the person to whom the compensation is awarded. South African courts have awarded compensation to shareholders who have suffered damages as a result of a diminution in the value of their shares based on various actions by the corporation and its management. Although the award of punitive damages is generally unknown to the South African legal system, that does not mean that such awards are necessarily contrary to public policy.

Whether a judgment was contrary to public policy depends on the facts of each case. Exorbitant, unconscionable, or excessive awards will generally be contrary to public policy. South African courts cannot enter into the merits of a foreign judgment and cannot act as a court of appeal or review over the foreign court. Further, if a foreign judgment is enforced by a South African court, it will be payable in South African currency. Also, under South Africa’s exchange control laws, the approval of SARB is required before a defendant resident in South Africa may pay money to a non-resident plaintiff in satisfaction of a foreign judgment enforced by a court in South Africa.

It is doubtful whether an original action based on United States federal securities laws may be brought before South African courts. A plaintiff who is not resident in South Africa may be required to provide security for costs in the event of proceedings being initiated in South Africa. Furthermore, the Rules of the High Court of South Africa require that documents executed outside South Africa must be authenticated for the purpose of use in South African courts.

In reaching the foregoing conclusions, we consulted with our South African legal counsel, Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr Inc.

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None.

We lease our corporate headquarters facility which consists of approximately 93,000 square feet in Johannesburg, South Africa. We also lease properties throughout South Africa, including a 12,088 square foot manufacturing facility in Lazer Park, 149 financial services branches and 78 depot facilities. We also lease additional office space in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, South Africa; Guildford and London, United Kingdom; Seoul, South Korea; Munich, Germany; Hong Kong and Zhuhai, China; Mumbai, India; Black River, Mauritius and Frederick, Maryland. These leases expire at various dates through 2020. We own land and buildings in Ahnsung, Kyung-gi, South Korea, that is used for the storage of business documents. We believe that we have adequate facilities for our current business operations.

Constitutional Court order regarding extension of contract with SASSA for 12 months

On March 17, 2017, the Constitutional Court delivered its order regarding the continued payment of social grants upon the expiration of the contract between our subsidiary, CPS, and SASSA on March 31, 2017. The Constitutional Court ordered that SASSA and CPS are under a constitutional obligation to ensure payment of social welfare grants from April 1, 2017 and ordered CPS and SASSA to ensure payment of grants, for a period of 12 months, under the expiring contract’s terms and conditions, augmented by certain additional terms and conditions. These included amendments to (i) adequately safeguard personal data obtained during the payment process and ensure that it remains private and may not be used for any purpose other than the payment of grants, and (ii) preclude anyone from inviting beneficiaries to “opt-in” to the sharing of confidential information for the marketing of goods and services. The Constitutional Court also ordered that CPS may request National Treasury to investigate and make a recommendation regarding the price charged by CPS in the extension contract and stated that National Treasury must file a report with the Constitutional Court stating its findings in this regard.

The Constitutional Court also included a public accountability provision in its March 2017 order that impact CPS directly. These provisions are similar to those included in its April 2014 order, and require that CPS provide the Constitutional Court with an audited statement of expenses incurred, income received and net profit earned under the 12 month extension contract ending March 31, 2018. SASSA is also required to obtain an independent audit of the audited information provided by CPS. Furthermore, the Constitutional Court has instructed SASSA to send this audited information to National Treasury for its approval prior to submission to the Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court included additional public accountability provisions that impact the Minister of Social Development and SASSA. These provisions require the Minister and SASSA to file reports on affidavit with the Constitutional Court every three months, commencing on June 19, 2017, setting out how they plan to ensure the payment of social grants after the end of the 12-month contract extension period, what steps they have taken in that regard, what further steps they will take, and when they will take each future step, so as to ensure that the payment of all social grants is made when they fall due after the expiry of the 12-month period. The reports filed by the Minister and SASSA must include, but is not limited to, the applicable time-frames for the various deliverables which form part of the plan, whether the time-frames have been complied with, and if not, why that is the case and what will be done to remedy the situation. The Minister and SASSA are also required to immediately report to the Constitutional Court and explain the reason for and consequences of any material changes to the circumstances included in the reports previously submitted to the Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court also ordered SASSA to ensure that any new payment method (i) adequately safeguards personal data obtained during the payment process and ensures that it remains private and may not be used for any purpose other than the payment of grants; and (ii) precludes a contracting party from inviting beneficiaries to “opt-in” to the sharing of confidential information for the marketing of goods and services.

The Constitutional Court order also invited parties involved in the Constitutional Court proceedings to provide the name and consent of independent legal practitioners and technical experts, together with the Auditor-General, to oversee the implementation of the payment of social welfare grants during the period to March 31, 2018, as well as oversee SASSA’s conduct to appoint a new service provider from April 1, 2018, or to perform the grant distribution service in-house. The Constitutional Court appointed a panel of ten such experts on June 6, 2017.

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Litigation Regarding Legality of Debit Orders under Social Assistance Act Regulations

On June 3, 2016, we filed for a declaratory order with the High Court of the Republic of South Africa Gauteng Division, Pretoria, or Pretoria High Court, to provide certainty to us, as well as other industry stakeholders, on the interpretation of the Social Assistance Act and recent Regulations promulgated in terms thereof, or the Regulations. The Regulations limit direct deductions from social grants paid to beneficiaries. We interpret the meaning of the word “deductions” to be specific to the practice of deducting amounts, historically limited to life insurance premiums from grants, before the grants are paid to social welfare beneficiaries’ bank accounts, and are of the opinion that the legislature did not intend to curtail the right of beneficiaries to transact freely after the money is deposited into their bank accounts.

We brought the application for a declaratory order because SASSA seeks to lend a broader interpretation to the meaning of the term “deductions” to incorporate any debit orders, EFT debits, purchase transactions, or fund transfers that are effected after the transfer of social grants to beneficiaries’ bank accounts. If SASSA’s interpretation were to prevail, debit transactions could no longer be used as a method for beneficiaries to make payments for financial services such as insurance premiums, loan repayments, electricity and other purchases, money transfers or any other electronic payments. We believe that forcing beneficiaries to pay for these products or services in cash would be a major setback to the national objective of financial inclusiveness, introduce financial and security risks for beneficiaries and result in significant price increases for these products and services.

We further believe that SASSA’s interpretation of the Social Assistance Act and the Regulations is erroneous for a number of reasons including, but not limited to, our belief that such an interpretation violates beneficiaries’ constitutional rights by limiting their fundamental right to enter into contracts and that such interpretation impermissibly encroaches on the jurisdiction and powers of the SARB and the Payments Association of South Africa, which regulate the national payment system. SASSA's interpretation effectively prohibits the social welfare recipient community from enjoying the benefits of a convenient, low-cost, reliable and ubiquitous payment system that enables the recipients to procure financial services at highly competitive rates.

We were joined in our application by several other industry participants, and the SARB also filed a responding affidavit.

On June 15, 2016, SASSA brought criminal charges against us and Grindrod Bank for contravening the Social Assistance Act, alleging that we and Grindrod Bank failed to act in accordance with SASSA’s instructions by processing debit orders against social welfare beneficiaries’ bank accounts after the Regulations came into effect.

On June 28, 2016, the Pretoria High Court scheduled a hearing on our application for a declaratory order for October 17 and 18, 2016. In its order, the Pretoria High Court prohibited SASSA from making any representations to the South African Police Services and the National Prosecuting Authority regarding the criminal charges brought against us and Grindrod Bank pending the determination of the dispute, including the determination of any appeals. In addition, the order prevented SASSA from issuing further demands to us and Grindrod Bank to stop the processing of debit transactions against SASSA bank accounts pending the determination of the dispute, including the determination of any appeals.

On August 8, 2016, we were informed that the NPA had reached a “no prosecution” decision on the criminal charges filed by SASSA.

The matter was heard on October 17 and 18, 2016 and on May 9, 2017, the Pretoria High Court issued the declaratory order sought by us that the Social Assistance Act and Regulations do not restrict social grant recipients in the operation of their banks accounts. The order clarifies that recipients may continue to initiate debit order instructions with any service provider, including our subsidiaries, against their bank accounts for the payment of goods and services. SASSA, its Chief Executive Officer and the Minister of Social Development were ordered to pay the costs of the application. The Pretoria High Court also refused the Black Sash Trust’s, or Black Sash, application to intervene in the matter. In support of its application, the Black Sash made several allegations of “illegal deductions” which we denied in our answering affidavits.

On May 17, 2017, the NPA reaffirmed its “no prosecution decision” reached in August 2016 on the criminal charges brought by SASSA against us and Grindrod Bank. In addition, the NPA notified us that no further action will be taken and that we can consider the case closed.

On June 20, 2017, the Pretoria High Court refused the applicants, including the Minister of Social Development, SASSA and Black Sash, application for leave to appeal the Pretoria High Court’s May 9, 2017, declaratory order. SASSA, its Chief Executive Officer and the Minister of Social Development were ordered to pay the costs of the application for the leave to appeal.

On July 19, 2017, each of SASSA and the Black Sash served applications petitioning the South African Supreme Court of Appeal, or the Supreme Court, to grant them leave to appeal to either the Supreme Court or to a full bench of the Pretoria High Court.

We cannot predict whether the Supreme Court will grant SASSA and/or the Black Sash leave to appeal this matter.

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Challenge to Payment by SASSA of Additional Implementation Costs

In March 2015, Corruption Watch, a South African non-profit civil society organization, commenced a legal proceeding in the High Court of South Africa seeking an order by the Court to review and set aside the decision of SASSA’s Chief Executive Officer to approve the payment to us of ZAR 317 million (approximately ZAR 277 million, excluding VAT) and directing us to repay the aforesaid amount. Corruption Watch claims that there was no lawful basis for the decision to make the payment to us, and that the decision was unreasonable and irrational and did not comply with South African legislation. We are named as a respondent in this legal proceeding.

As we previously disclosed, in June 2014, we received approximately ZAR 277 million, excluding VAT, from SASSA, related to the recovery of additional implementation costs we incurred during the beneficiary re-registration process in fiscal 2012 and 2013. After the award of the tender, SASSA requested that we biometrically register all social grant beneficiaries (including child grant beneficiaries) and collect additional information for each child grant recipient. We agreed to SASSA’s request, and as a result we performed approximately 11 million additional registrations beyond those that we tendered to register for the quoted service fee. Accordingly, we claimed a cost recovery from SASSA, supported by a factual findings certificate from an independent auditing firm. SASSA agreed to pay us the ZAR 277 million as full settlement of the additional costs we incurred.

Corruption Watch applied for a hearing date and it has been set down for hearing during the week commencing November 6, 2017.

We believe that Corruption Watch’s claim is without merit, and we are defending it vigorously. However, we cannot predict how the Court will rule on the matter.

NCR application for the cancelation of Moneyline’s registration as a credit provider

In September 2014, the NCR applied to the South African National Consumer Tribunal, or Tribunal, to cancel the registration of our subsidiary, Moneyline, for breach of the NCA based on an investigation concluded by it. Pursuant to the investigation, the NCA also issued two Compliance Notices – one to CPS and one to Moneyline. The Compliance Notice issued to Moneyline accused it of “having access into the Grindrod Bank Accounts of social grant beneficiaries which enables them (sic) to see the spending patterns of beneficiaries and deposit loan amounts into such accounts.” The Compliance Notice issued to CPS accused it of providing “information about social grant beneficiaries” to Moneyline in breach of section 68(1) of the NCA. The Compliance Notices demanded that both CPS and Moneyline take the appropriate steps to address the alleged non-compliance with the NCA and to report in writing to the NCR, along with an independent audit report, that they were no longer non-compliant as alleged by the Compliance Notices.

We objected to the Compliance Notices and the Tribunal set both Compliance Notices aside.

Regarding the NCR’s application to cancel the registration of Moneyline, we raised a number of procedural points in defense, which, if we are successful, will be dispositive of the application. Argument on these points was heard on November 27, 2015, before three tribunal members. Two ruled against us and one upheld our points. We are appealing the majority ruling to the High Court. A hearing date has been allocated and the appeal will be heard on December 6, 2017. If we are successful, it will dispose of the application. If we do not prevail, then the NCR’s application will be set down before the Consumer Tribunal for argument on the main issues raised by the NCR, as dealt with above. We cannot predict the outcome of this litigation.

There are no other material pending legal proceedings, other than ordinary routine litigation incidental to our business, to which we are a party or of which any of our property is the subject.

Not applicable.

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PART II

Market information

Our common stock is listed on The Nasdaq Global Select Market, or Nasdaq, in the United States under the symbol “UEPS” and on the JSE in South Africa under the symbol “NT1.” The Nasdaq is our principal market for the trading of our common stock.

The following table sets forth, for the periods indicated, the high and low sales prices of our common stock as reported by Nasdaq.

Our transfer agent in the United States is Computershare Shareowner Services LLC, 480 Washington Blvd, Jersey City, New Jersey, 07310. According to the records of our transfer agent, as of August 16, 2017, there were 15 shareholders of record of our common stock. A substantially greater number of holders of our common stock are “street name” or beneficial holders, whose shares are held of record by banks, brokers, and other financial institutions. Our transfer agent in South Africa is Link Market Services South Africa (Pty) Ltd, 13th Floor, Rennie House, 19 Ameshoff Street, Braamfontein, 2001, South Africa.

Dividends

We have not paid any dividends on our shares of common stock during our last two fiscal years and presently intend to retain future earnings to finance the expansion of the business. We do not anticipate paying any cash dividends in the foreseeable future. The future dividend policy will depend on our earnings, capital requirements, expansion plans, financial condition and other relevant factors.

Issuer purchases of equity securities

On February 3, 2016, our board of directors approved the replenishment of our existing share repurchase authorization to repurchase up to an aggregate of $100 million of common stock. The authorization has no expiration date. On June 29, 2016, we adopted a Rule 10b5-1 plan for the purpose of repurchasing approximately $50 million of our common stock. The plan was established in connection with the $100 million share repurchase authorization. The plan expired at the end of August 2016.

On May 24, 2017, in connection with the retirement of our co-founder, former chief executive officer and former member of our board of directors, Mr. S.C.P. Belamant, we repurchased from him a total of 1,269,751 shares of our common stock, which included the repurchase of shares issued upon the exercise of his 252,286 stock options.

The table below presents our common stock purchased during fiscal 2017 per quarter:

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Share performance graph

The chart below compares the five-year cumulative return, assuming the reinvestment of dividends, where applicable, on our common stock with that of the S&P 500 Index and the NASDAQ Industrial Index. This graph assumes $100 was invested on June 30, 2012, in each of our common stock, the companies in the S&P 500 Index, and the companies in the NASDAQ Industrial Index.

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The following selected historical consolidated financial data should be read together with Item 7—“Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and Item 8—“Financial Statements and Supplementary Data.” The following selected historical financial data as of June 30, 2017 and 2016, and for the three years ended June 30, 2017 have been derived from our consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The selected historical consolidated financial data presented below as of June 30, 2015, 2014 and 2013 and for the years ended June 30, 2014 and 2013, have been derived from our consolidated financial statements, which are not included herein. The selected historical financial data as of each date and for each period presented have been prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. These historical results are not necessarily indicative of results to be expected in any future period.

Consolidated Statements of Operations Data
(in thousands, except per share data)

⁽¹⁾    Includes revenue and implementation costs related to our SASSA contract from April 2012. In addition, 2014 includes recovery of $26.6 million of implementation costs from SASSA.
⁽²⁾    Includes a separation payment of $8.0 million paid to our former chief executive officer in 2017.
⁽³⁾    Includes a non-cash charge of approximately $11.3 million in 2014 related to common stock issued in a BEE transaction.

Additional Operating Data:
(in thousands, except percentages)

⁽¹⁾      Cash flows used in investing activities include movements in settlement assets and cash flows provided by (used in) financing activities include movement in settlement liabilities.
⁽²⁾     Fiscal 2017 operating income margin was 18% before the separation payment of $8.0 million paid to our former chief executive officer.

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Consolidated Balance Sheet Data:
(in thousands)

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The following discussion and analysis should be read in conjunction with Item 6—“Selected Financial Data” and Item 8—“Financial Statements and Supplementary Data.” In addition to historical consolidated financial information, the following discussion and analysis contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. See Item 1A— “Risk Factors” and “Forward Looking Statements.”

Overview

We are a leading provider of payment solutions, transaction processing services and financial technology across multiple industries and in a number of emerging and developed economies.

We have developed and market a comprehensive transaction processing solution that encompasses our smart card-based alternative payment system for the unbanked and under-banked populations of developing economies and for mobile transaction channels. Our market-leading system can enable the billions of people globally who generally have limited or no access to a bank account to enter affordably into electronic transactions with each other, government agencies, employers, merchants and other financial service providers. Our UEPS, and UEPS/EMV derivative discussed below, uses biometrically secure smart cards that operate in real-time but offline, unlike traditional payment systems offered by major banking institutions that require immediate access through a communications network to a centralized computer. This offline capability means that users of our system can conduct transactions at any time with other card holders in even the most remote areas so long as a smart card reader, which is often portable and battery powered, is available. Our off-line systems also offer the highest level of availability and affordability by removing any elements that are costly and are prone to outages. Our latest version of the UEPS technology has been certified by EMV, which facilitates our traditionally proprietary UEPS system to interoperate with the global EMV standard and allows card holders to transact at any EMV-enabled point of sale terminal or ATM. The UEPS/EMV technology has been deployed on an extensive scale in South Africa through the issuance of MasterCard-branded UEPS/EMV cards to our social welfare grant customers. In addition to effecting purchases, cash-backs and any form of payment, our system can be used for banking, healthcare management, international money transfers, voting and identification.

We also provide secure financial technology solutions and services, by offering transaction processing, financial and clinical risk management solutions to various industries. We have extensive expertise in secure online transaction processing, cryptography, mobile telephony, integrated circuit card (chip/smart card) technologies, and the design and provision of financial and value-added services to our cardholder base.

Our technology is widely used in South Africa today, where we distribute pension and welfare payments, using our UEPS/EMV technology, to over ten million recipient cardholders across the entire country, process debit and credit card payment transactions on behalf of a wide range of retailers through our EasyPay system, process value-added services such as bill payments and prepaid airtime and electricity for the major bill issuers and local councils in South Africa, and provide mobile telephone top-up transactions for all of the South African mobile carriers. We are the largest provider of third-party and associated payroll payments in South Africa through our FIHRST service. We provide financial inclusion services such as microloans, insurance, mobile transacting and prepaid utilities to our cardholder base.

In addition, through KSNET, we are one of the top three value-added network, or VAN, processors in South Korea, and we offer card processing, payment gateway and banking value-added services in that country. We also offer issuing and acquiring capabilities through Transact24 in Hong Kong. Our Masterpayment subsidiary in Germany provides value added payment services to online retailers across Europe. Our XeoHealth service provides funders and providers of healthcare in United States with an on-line real-time management system for healthcare transactions.

Our Net1 Solutions business unit is responsible for the worldwide technical development and commercialization of our array of web and mobile applications and payment technologies, such as MVC, Chip and GSM licensing and VTU, and has deployed solutions in many countries, including South Africa, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi, Cameroon, the Philippines, India and Colombia.

Sources of Revenue

We generate our revenues by charging transaction fees to government agencies, merchants, financial service providers, utility providers, bill issuers, employers, healthcare providers and cardholders; by providing loans and insurance products and by selling hardware, licensing software and providing related technology services.

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We have structured our business and our business development efforts around four related but separate approaches to deploying our technology. In our most basic approach, we act as a supplier, selling our equipment, software, and related technology to a customer. The revenue and costs associated with this approach are reflected in our Financial inclusion and applied technologies segment.

We have found that we have greater revenue and profit opportunities, however, by acting as a service provider instead of a supplier. In this approach we own and operate the UEPS ourselves, charging one-time and on-going fees for the use of the system either on a fixed or ad valorem basis. This is the case in South Africa, where we distribute welfare grants on behalf of the South African government on a fixed fee basis, but charge a fee on an ad valorem basis for goods and services purchased using our smart card. The revenue and costs associated with this approach are reflected in our South African transaction processing and Financial inclusion and applied technologies segments.

Because our smart cards are designed to enable the delivery of more advanced services and products, we are also willing to supply those services and products directly where the business case is compelling. For instance, we provide short-term loans to our smart card holders. This is an example of the third approach that we have taken. Here we can act as the principal in operating a business that can be better delivered through our UEPS. We can also act as an agent, for instance, in the provision of insurance policies. In both cases, the revenue and costs associated with this approach are reflected in our Financial inclusion and applied technologies segment.

In South Africa, we also generate fees from debit and credit card transaction processing, the provision of value-added services such as bill payments, mobile top-up and prepaid utility sales, and from providing a payroll transaction management service. The revenue and costs associated with these services are reflected in our South African transaction processing and Financial inclusion and applied technologies segments.

Through KSNET, we earn most of our revenue from payment processing services we provide to approximately 237,000 merchants and to card issuers in South Korea through our value-added-network. Through Masterpayment and Transact24 we generate fee revenue through the provision of payment service provider and card issuing and acquiring services in primarily Germany, China and the U.S. Furthermore, in the U.S., we earn transaction fees from our customers utilizing our XeoRules online real-time management system for healthcare transactions. We also generate fees from our customers who utilize our VCPay technology to generate a unique, one-time use prepaid virtual card number to securely purchase goods and services or perform bill payments in any card-not-present environment. The revenue and costs at of all of these businesses are reflected in our International transaction processing segment.

Finally, we have business partnerships or joint ventures to introduce our financial technology solutions to markets such as Namibia, One Credit in Nigeria, and MobiKwik in India. In these situations, we take an equity position in the business while also acting as a supplier of technology. In evaluating these types of opportunities, we seek to maintain a highly disciplined approach, carefully selecting partners, participating closely in the development of the business plan and remaining actively engaged in the management of the new business. In most instances, the joint venture or partnership has a license to use our proprietary technologies in the specific territory, including the back-end system. We also own 26% of Finbond Group Limited, or Finbond, a South African public company that has a mutual banking license in South Africa and owns certain state lenders in the U.S. We account for our equity investments using the equity method.

We believe that this flexible approach enables us to drive adoption of our solution while capturing the value created by the implementation of our technology.

Developments during Fiscal 2017

SASSA contract extended to March 31, 2018

Our contract signed in February 2012 with SASSA was scheduled to expire on March 31, 2017. At a Parliamentary briefing session on February 1, 2017, SASSA informed the meeting that it would not be ready to assume the payment function on April 1, 2017. SASSA expressed its intention to approach the Constitutional Court to obtain permission to extend our contract. On February 9, 2017, we received a letter from SASSA that essentially was an invitation to meet to discuss an interim arrangement to continue with the payment of social welfare grants after March 31, 2017, for a limited period. The parties agreed to meet in the first week of March 2017.

On February 28, 2017, a South African non-profit organization initiated a court process for the Constitutional Court of South Africa to hear a matter that was described as in the public interest and in the interest of all grant beneficiaries. The applicant sought reinstatement of the oversight role of the Constitutional Court for the payment of social grants to ensure compliance by SASSA with its constitutional obligations to provide social assistance in a lawful manner that is in line with constitutional rights and values. In early March 2017, other entities joined these proceedings. We did not oppose the applications made.

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In early March 2017, we met with SASSA to discuss the interim arrangement referred to above. The parties agreed on draft terms following these discussions. These draft terms were subject to approval by National Treasury or the Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court heard the matter referred to above on March 15, 2017, and issued its order on March 17, 2017. The impact of the Constitutional Court’s order on us is summarized under “Item 3—Legal Proceedings.” The order effectively extends the expiring contract and the suspension of the declaration of invalidity to March 31, 2018, under the expiring contract’s terms and conditions, augmented by certain additional terms and conditions as described under “Item 3—Legal Proceedings.”

On March 31, 2017, we signed an addendum to the expiring contract with SASSA which extends the contract to March 31, 2018, under the expiring contracts terms and conditions and includes the specific terms as ordered by the Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court also ordered the Minister and SASSA to file reports with the Constitutional Court every three months, commencing on June 19, 2017, setting out how they plan to ensure the payment of social grants after the end of the 12-month contract extension period, what steps they have taken in that regard, what further steps they will take, and when they will take each future step, so as to ensure that the payment of all social grants is made when they fall due after the expiry of the 12-month period. The reports filed by the Minister and SASSA must include, but is not limited to, the applicable time-frames for the various deliverables which form part of the plan, whether the time-frames have been complied with, and if not, why that is the case and what will be done to remedy the situation. The Minister and SASSA are also required to immediately report to the Constitutional Court and explain the reason for and consequences of any material changes to the circumstances included in the reports previously submitted to the Constitutional Court.

The Constitutional Court order also invited parties involved in the Constitutional Court proceedings to provide the name and consent of independent legal practitioners and technical experts, together with the Auditor-General, to oversee the implementation of the payment of social welfare grants during the period to March 31, 2018, as well as oversee SASSA’s conduct to appoint a new service provider from April 1, 2018, or to perform the grant distribution service in-house. The Constitutional Court appointed a panel of ten such nominated experts on June 6, 2017. It is our understanding that the expert panel is obtaining information from a number of sources. Accordingly, we have received a request for information from the expert panel and have provided a comprehensive response.

Progress of financial inclusion initiatives in South Africa

In June 2015, we began the rollout of EPE, our business-to-consumer, or B2C, offering in South Africa. At July 31, 2017, we had more than 2.0 million active EPE accounts, compared to 1.95 million at April 28, 2017. EPE is a fully transactional, low cost account created to serve the needs of South Africa’s unbanked and under-banked population, most of whom are social grant recipients. The EPE account offers customers a comprehensive suite of financial and various financial inclusion services, such as prepaid products, in an economical, convenient and secure solution. EPE provides account holders with a UEPS-EMV debit MasterCard, mobile and internet banking services, ATM and POS services, as well as loans, insurance and other financial products and value-added services. However, SASSA and a non—profit organization continue to challenge the ability of beneficiaries to freely transact with the grants that they receive as described under “Item 3—Legal Proceedings.”

In order for us to address the sizeable opportunity for EPE and related financial inclusion services in South Africa, in fiscal 2016, we started to expand our brick-and-mortar financial services branch infrastructure, which supplements our nationwide distribution, with a UEPS/EMV-enabled ATM network, and hired a dedicated sales force. At July 31, 2017, we had 149 branches (July 31, 2016: 140), 980 ATMs (July 31, 2016: 904), and 1,822 (July 31, 2016: 2,200) dedicated employees. We reduced our employee headcount throughout fiscal 2017 as a result of the slowdown of the branch expansion during the year and the stabilization and improvement in the efficiency of the branch operations. However, the reduction in employee headcount during the fiscal year did not result in a lower overall employment charge in 2017 relative to 2016 because, on average, we had more employees during fiscal 2017 compared with fiscal 2016 in addition to higher rates per employee due to annual salary increases.

During the 13 months since July 1, 2016 we sold approximately 250,000 new policies related to our simple, low-cost life insurance products, in addition to the free basic life insurance policy provided with every EPE account opened.

We experienced higher year-over-year growth in the demand for our loans, which are among the most affordable available to our customers. Tougher economic conditions in South Africa, aggravated by rising food prices as a result of widespread drought conditions and a weakening currency, has had an impact on the number of clients who qualify for our loan products.

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The graph below presents the growth of the number of EPE cards and Smart Life policies:

Separation agreement with former chief executive officer

In May 2017, we entered into a Separation and Release of Claims Agreement, or Separation Agreement, with one of co-founders, chief executive officer and director, Mr. Serge C.P. Belamant. The Separation Agreement provided for certain payments to Mr. S.C.P. Belamant, including an aggregate $8.0 million severance and cooperative resignation payment and the repurchase for 1,269,751 shares of our common stock (including the repurchase of 252,286 shares underlying Mr. S.C.P. Belamant’s in-the-money stock options) for an aggregate repurchase of $13.7 million. We also entered into a Consulting Agreement with Mr. S.C.P. Belamant, under which he would provide consulting services to us for a period of up to two years following his departure. On July 31, 2017, we provided Mr. S.C.P. Belamant a written termination notice. We will not be making any termination payments to Mr. S.C.P. Belamant beyond the 90-day notice period.

Strategic investments

Investments in Cell C Proprietary Limited and DNI-4PL Contracts Proprietary Limited

On August 2, 2017, we purchased 15% of Cell C, for an aggregate purchase price of ZAR 2.0 billion ($153.3 million translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017) in cash. Cell C is one of the three major licensed mobile operators in South Africa with over 15 million active subscribers. We funded the transaction through a combination of cash and credit facilities described in Note 14 to our consolidated financial statements.

On July 27, 2017, we purchased a 45% interest in DNI for ZAR 945 million ($72.4 million translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017) in cash. DNI is the leading distributor of mobile subscriber starter packs for Cell C, while also distributing prepaid airtime through its extensive network of field operatives and agents. We have agreed to pay to DNI an additional amount of up to ZAR 360 million, in cash, subject to its achievement of an agreed profit before tax, as defined in the agreements, target between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2019. All amounts were translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017. We have a two-year option to purchase an additional 10% interest in DNI.

The investments in Cell C and DNI are consistent with our approach of leveraging our significant and established infrastructures, and pursuing strategic acquisition opportunities or partnerships to gain access to new markets or complementary products. We identified the need to offer customers a truly bespoke, affordable and comprehensive package that will go beyond basic telephony. An integrated mobile-based digital product will therefore likely differentiate the offerings of all the relevant stakeholders in this transaction including Net1. The Cell C and DNI investments allow us to address the needs of the broader South African population by owning the value chain including the network, payment, product, distribution and hardware.

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MobiKwik

Pursuant to a subscription agreement with One MobiKwik Systems Private Limited, or MobiKwik, in India, we agreed to make an equity investment of up to $40.0 million in MobiKwik over a 24 month period. MobiKwik is India's largest independent mobile payments network, with over 55 million users and 1.5 million merchants. We made an initial $15.0 million investment in August 2016 and a further $10.6 million investment in June 2017. As of June 30, 2017, we owned approximately 13.5% of MobiKwik. In August 2017, MobiKwik raised additional funding through the issuance of additional shares to a new shareholder at a 90% premium to our investments and our percentage ownership was diluted to 12.0%.

In addition, through a technology agreement, our Virtual Card technology will be integrated across all MobiKwik wallets in order to provide ubiquity across all merchants in India. As part of our continued strategic relationship a number of our other products, including our digital banking platform, are expected to be deployed by MobiKwik over the next year.

Bank Frick

On January 12, 2017, we entered into a share purchase agreement with the Kuno Frick Family Foundation, or Frick Foundation, to acquire a 30% interest in Bank Frick & Co AG, a fully licensed bank based in Balzers, Liechtenstein, from the Frick Foundation for approximately CHF 39.8 million ($41.5 million translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017). The completion of the investment is subject to approval from the Financial Market Authority Liechtenstein. Following the successful completion of this investment, we will have a two-year option to acquire an additional 35% interest in Bank Frick.

Bank Frick provides a complete suite of banking services, with one of its key strategic pillars being the provision of payment services and funding of financial technology opportunities. Bank Frick holds acquiring licenses from both Visa and MasterCard and operates a branch in London. Together with Bank Frick, we have jointly identified several funding opportunities, including for our working capital finance, card issuing and acquiring and transaction processing activities. The pending investment in Bank Frick has the potential to provide us with a stable, long term and strategic relationship with a fully licensed bank. Together with Bank Frick, we have agreed that approximately $30 million of the Bank Frick’s free equity will be utilized as seed capital for a fund dedicated to our future activities.

Finbond

On October 7, 2016, we provided a loan of ZAR 139.2 million ($10.0 million, translated at the foreign exchange rates applicable on the date of the loan) to Finbond in order for Finbond to partially finance its expansion strategy in the United States. Interest on the loan is payable quarterly in arrears and is based on the London Interbank Offered Rate, or LIBOR, in effect from time to time plus a margin of 12.00%. The LIBOR rate was 1.21% on June 30, 2017. The loan was initially repayable in full at the earlier of Finbond concluding a rights offer or February 28, 2017, but the agreement was subsequently amended to extend the date to August 31, 2017. If Finbond does not settle the amount outstanding on August 31, 2017, we may elect to convert our loan to Finbond shares at an agreed conversion price or to continue to earn interest until such time as the loan is settled in full. We expect the parties to agree to extend the expiration date of the agreement to a period not exceeding 12 months from August 31, 2017. We provided an irrevocable undertaking to participate in the rights offering and convert the ZAR 139.2 million loan to Finbond shares as part of this process.

Mastertrading - working capital financing and supply chain solutions

During fiscal 2017, we commenced with the expansion of our working capital financing and supply chain solutions, an alternate trade finance offering, under the Mastertrading brand in a number of European countries and the U.S. Through this offering, we support the liquidity and working capital position of our customers as we act as an “interim trader”. Customer identified goods are bought and paid for by us and re-sold to our customers with delivery scheduled for an agreed future date. Our customers pay us an agreed fixed trade margin based on the number of days between the date that we pay for the goods and the date that they pay us for the goods. Generally, customers pay us the trade margin at the end of the transaction, however, depending on the terms of the particular agreement, the trade margin may also be due on a monthly basis. We believe that our customers benefit from this offering through improved supplier relations, better terms (e.g. discounts) and improved liquidity situation since the goods are bought back from the interim trade just in time before the sale to the end customer.

In Europe, we provide our solution to a number of clients in the manufacturing, property development and wholesale sectors. The interim trades in Europe have a duration ranging from two weeks to nine months and, as of June 30, 2017, we expect approximately $17.0 million (€14.9 million) to be repaid on a revolving base.

In the U.S., we provide our offering to customers in the petroleum industry, and in certain instances we provide the working capital financing directly to our customer. Trades in the U.S. have a duration ranging from between 12 to 24 weeks and as of June 30, 2017, we expect approximately $12.2 million to be repaid on a revolving base through November 2017. We have been informed that one of our U.S. customer’s clients breached their contractual obligations on a particular transaction which resulted in a cash loss to our customer of approximately $3.7 million. As a result, our customer has not repaid the full amount due to us and still owes us $3.8 million, including interest, related to this specific transaction. Our customer has commenced recovery procedures, including formal legal proceedings, against its client. Notwithstanding these actions pursued by our customer, we have created an allowance for credit losses of $3.8 million for the full amount due to us as we cannot predict whether the legal proceedings initiated by our customer to recover the amounts due from its client will be successful.

We have utilized a facility from Bank Frick to fund the growth of the majority of the European working capital receivables and utilized existing cash reserves to grow our U.S. working capital book.

Changes in Executive Leadership and Board of Directors

In April 2017, our board of directors determined to split our chairman and chief executive officer roles in recognition of the growing practice of U.S. public companies, as well as the customary practice of South African public companies, for the chairman to be an independent director. Mr. C.S. Seabrooke was appointed as chairman of our board in April 2017.

In June 2017, Mr. Alfred T. Mockett joined our board as an independent non-employee director. Mr. Mockett also serves on our nominating and corporate governance, audit and remuneration committees. The IFC Investors has advised us that it regards Mr. Mockett as the independent director nominated by the IFC Investors to our board of directors by virtue of the policy agreement we signed with the IFC Investors.

In June 2017, Mr. Herman G. Kotzé became our chief executive officer, replacing Mr. S.C.P. Belamant, who retired as chief executive officer. Mr. Kotzé has been our chief financial officer, secretary and treasurer since 2004, and will retain these positions until a suitable candidate is identified and engaged to perform these functions.

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Closure of DOJ investigation related to 2012 SASSA contract

In July 2017, we were advised that the U.S. Department of Justice had closed its investigation concerning possible violations of the FCPA. The investigation commenced in November 2012, following the award of the SASSA national contract to us in January 2012.

The closing of the DOJ investigation follows the United States Securities and Exchange Commission closing their investigation in June 2015, the dismissal of a shareholder class action law suit by the U.S. Southern District in September 2015, and the South African Police Service’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, the Hawks, closing their investigation in November 2015.

Critical Accounting Policies

Our consolidated financial statements have been prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP, which requires management to make estimates and assumptions about future events that affect the reported amount of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities. As future events and their effects cannot be determined with absolute certainty, the determination of estimates requires management’s judgment based on a variety of assumptions and other determinants such as historical experience, current and expected market conditions and certain scientific evaluation techniques. Management believes that the following accounting policies are critical due to the degree of estimation required and the impact of these policies on the understanding of the results of our operations and financial condition.

Business Combinations and the Recoverability of Goodwill

A component of our growth strategy has been to acquire and integrate businesses that complement our existing operations. The purchase price of an acquired business is allocated to the tangible and intangible assets acquired and liabilities assumed based upon their estimated fair value at the date of purchase. The difference between the purchase price and the fair value of the net assets acquired is recorded as goodwill. In determining the fair value of assets acquired and liabilities assumed in a business combination, we use various recognized valuation methods, including present value modeling. Further, we make assumptions using certain valuation techniques, including discount rates and timing of future cash flows.

We review the carrying value of goodwill annually or more frequently if circumstances indicate impairment may have occurred. In performing this review, we are required to estimate the fair value of goodwill that is implied from a valuation of the reporting unit to which the goodwill has been allocated after deducting the fair values of all the identifiable assets and liabilities that form part of the reporting unit.

The determination of the fair value of a reporting unit requires us to make significant judgments and estimates. In determining the fair value of reporting units, we consider the earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, and the EBITDA multiples applicable to peer and industry comparables of the reporting units. We base our estimates on assumptions we believe to be reasonable but that are unpredictable and inherently uncertain. In addition, we make judgments and assumptions in allocating assets and liabilities to each of our reporting units. The results of our impairment tests during fiscal 2017 indicated that the fair value of our reporting units exceeded their carrying values and therefore our reporting units were not at risk of potential impairment.

Intangible Assets Acquired Through Acquisitions

The fair values of the identifiable intangible assets acquired through acquisitions were determined by management using the purchase method of accounting. We completed acquisitions during fiscal 2017 and 2016 where we identified and recognized intangible assets. We have used the relief from royalty method, the multi-period excess earnings method, the income approach and the cost approach to value acquisition-related intangible assets. In so doing, we made assumptions regarding expected future revenues and expenses to develop the underlying forecasts, applied contributory asset charges, discount rates, exchange rates, cash tax charges and useful lives.

The valuations were based on information available at the time of the acquisition and the expectations and assumptions that have been deemed reasonable by us. No assurance can be given, however, that the underlying assumptions or events associated with such assets will occur as projected. For these reasons, among others, the actual cash flows may vary from forecasts of future cash flows. To the extent actual cash flows vary, revisions to the useful life or impairment of intangible assets may be necessary.

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Deferred Taxation

We estimate our tax liability through the calculations done for the determination of our current tax liability, together with assessing temporary differences resulting from the different treatment of items for tax and accounting purposes. These differences result in deferred tax assets and liabilities which are disclosed on our balance sheet. Management then has to assess the likelihood that deferred tax assets are more likely than not to be realized in future periods. In the event it is determined that the deferred tax assets to be realized in the future would be in excess of the net recorded amount, an adjustment to the deferred tax asset valuation allowance would be recorded.

This adjustment would increase income in the period such determination was made. Likewise, should it be determined that all or part of the net deferred tax asset would not be realized in the future, an adjustment to increase the deferred tax asset valuation allowance would be charged to income in the period such determination is made. In assessing the need for a valuation allowance, historical levels of income, expectations and risks associated with estimates of future taxable income and ongoing prudent and practicable tax planning strategies are considered. During fiscal 2017 and 2016, respectively, we recorded a net increase of $0.1 million and $16.3 million to our valuation allowance, and in fiscal 2015, we recorded a net decrease of $2.6 million to our valuation allowance.

Stock-based Compensation

Management is required to make estimates and assumptions related to our valuation and recording of stock-based compensation charges under current accounting standards. These standards require all share-based compensation to employees to be recognized in the statement of operations based on their respective grant date fair values over the requisite service periods and also requires an estimation of forfeitures when calculating compensation expense.

We utilize the Cox Ross Rubinstein binomial model to measure the fair value of stock options granted to employees and directors and recognize compensation cost on a straight line basis. Option-pricing models require estimates of a number of key valuation inputs including expected volatility, expected dividend yield, expected term and risk-free interest rate. Our management has estimated forfeitures based on historic employee behavior under similar compensation plans. The fair value of stock options is affected by the assumptions selected. Net stock-based compensation expense from continuing operations was $2.0 million, $3.6 million and $3.2 million for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, respectively.

Accounts Receivable and Allowance for Doubtful Accounts Receivable

We maintain an allowance for doubtful accounts receivable related to our Financial inclusion and applied technologies and International transaction-based activities segments with respect to sales or rental of hardware, support and maintenance services provided; or sale of licenses to customers; or the provision of transaction processing services to our customers; or our working capital financing and supply chain solutions provided.

Our policy is to regularly review the aging of outstanding amounts due from customers and adjust the provision based on management’s estimate of the recoverability of the amounts outstanding.

Management considers factors including period outstanding, creditworthiness of the customers, past payment history and the results of discussions by our credit department with the customer. We consider this policy to be appropriate taking into account factors such as historical bad debts, current economic trends and changes in our customer payment patterns. Additional provisions may be required should the ability of our customers to make payments when due deteriorate in the future. A significant amount of judgment is required to assess the ultimate recoverability of these receivables, including on-going evaluation of the creditworthiness of each customer.

Microlending

We maintain an allowance for doubtful finance loans receivable related to our Financial inclusion and applied technologies segment with respect to microlending loans provided to our customers. Our policy is to regularly review the ageing of outstanding amounts due from borrowers and adjust the provision based on management’s estimate of the recoverability of finance loans receivable. We write off microlending loans and related service fees if a borrower is in arrears with repayments for more than three months or dies.

Management considers factors including the period of the microlending loan outstanding, creditworthiness of the customers and the past payment history and trends of its established microlending book. We consider this policy to be appropriate taking into account factors such as historical bad debts, current economic trends and changes in our customer payment patterns. Additional allowances may be required should the ability of our customers to make payments when due deteriorate in the future. A significant amount of judgment is required to assess the ultimate recoverability of these finance loan receivables, including on-going evaluation of the creditworthiness of each customer.

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Recent Accounting Pronouncements

Recent accounting pronouncements adopted

Refer to Note 2 of our consolidated financial statements for a full description of recent accounting pronouncements, including the expected dates of adoption and effects on financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Recent accounting pronouncements not yet adopted as of June 30, 2017

Refer to Note 2 of our consolidated financial statements for a full description of recent accounting pronouncements not yet adopted as of June 30, 2017, including the expected dates of adoption and effects on financial condition, results of operations and cash flows.

Currency Exchange Rate Information

Actual exchange rates

The actual exchange rates for and at the end of the periods presented were as follows:

ZAR: US $ Exchange Rates

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KRW: US $ Exchange Rates

Translation Exchange Rates

We are required to translate our results of operations from ZAR to U.S. dollars on a monthly basis. Thus, the average rates used to translate this data for the years ended June 30, 2017, 2016 and 2015, vary slightly from the averages shown in the table above. The translation rates we use in presenting our results of operations are the rates shown in the following table:

Results of Operations

The discussion of our consolidated overall results of operations is based on amounts as reflected in our audited consolidated financial statements which are prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. We analyze our results of operations both in U.S. dollars, as presented in the consolidated financial statements, and supplementally in ZAR, because ZAR is the functional currency of the entities which contribute the majority of our profits and is the currency in which the majority of our transactions are initially incurred and measured. Due to the significant impact of currency fluctuations between the U.S. dollar and ZAR on our reported results and because we use the U.S. dollar as our reporting currency, we believe that the supplemental presentation of our results of operations in ZAR is useful to investors to understand the changes in the underlying trends of our business.

Our operating segment revenue presented in “—Results of operations by operating segment” represents total revenue per operating segment before intercompany eliminations. A reconciliation between total operating segment revenue and revenue presented in our consolidated financial statements is included in Note 23 to those statements.

Fiscal 2017 includes Masterpayment Financial Services Limited, or Malta FS, from November 1, 2016 and Pros Software from October 1, 2016. Fiscal 2016 includes the results of Transact24 from the January 1, 2016 and Masterpayment from April 1, 2016. Refer also to Note 3 to the consolidated financial statements.

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Fiscal 2017 Compared to Fiscal 2016

The following factors had an influence on our results of operations during fiscal 2017 as compared with the same period in the prior year:

Consolidated overall results of operations

This discussion is based on the amounts which were prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

The following tables show the changes in the items comprising our statements of operations, both in U.S. dollars and in ZAR:

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In ZAR, the decrease in revenue was primarily due to lower prepaid airtime sales, fewer ad hoc terminal sales, and a lower contribution from KSNET due to regulatory changes in South Korea, which was partially offset by more fees generated from our EPE and ATM offerings, improved lending and insurance activities, the inclusion of Masterpayment’s businesses, and an increase in the number of SASSA UEPS/EMV beneficiaries paid.

In ZAR, the decrease in cost of goods sold, IT processing, servicing and support was primarily due to fewer prepaid airtime and ad hoc terminal sales, which was partially offset by higher expenses incurred due to increased usage of the South African National Payment System by beneficiaries, expenses incurred to operate our EPE and ATM offerings, and the inclusion of Masterpayment’s businesses.

In ZAR, our selling, general and administration expense increased primarily due to a higher employee costs resulting from our EPE roll-out in fiscal 2016, the impact of October 2016 annual salary increases for our South African and UK-based employees, an $8.0 million separation payment to our former chief executive officer, an allowance for credit losses related to a specific customer of $3.8 million, as well as increases in goods and services purchased from third parties. Our fiscal 2016 selling, general and administration expense includes a $1.9 million gain on re-measurement of the previously held interest related to the T24 acquisition and a gain of ZAR 30 million ($2.2 million) resulting from the change in accounting for Finbond due to the appointment of our representative to Finbond’s board of directors.

Our operating income margin for fiscal 2017 and 2016 was 16% and 19%, respectively, and our fiscal 2017 margin was 18% excluding the $8.0 million separation payment to our former chief executive officer. We discuss the components of operating income margin under “—Results of operations by operating segment.” The decrease is primarily attributable to the separation payment to our former chief executive officer and higher cost of goods sold, IT processing, servicing and support referred to above, and partially offset by a decrease in depreciation expenses.

In ZAR, depreciation and amortization decreased primarily due to lower overall amortization of intangible assets that are fully amortized and tangible assets that are fully depreciated. These decreases were partially offset by an increase in acquisition-related intangible asset amortization resulting from recent transactions, including Masterpayment and Pros Software.

In ZAR, interest on surplus cash increased to $20.9 million (ZAR 284.6 million) from $15.3 million (ZAR 220.0 million), due primarily to the interest received from our loan to Finbond and higher average daily ZAR cash balances and ZAR interest rates, partially offset by the lower interest earned on the U.S. dollar cash reserves that we converted from ZAR through distributions from our South African subsidiary.

In ZAR, interest expense decreased to $3.5 million (ZAR 47.4 million) from $3.4 million (ZAR 49.2 million), due to a lower average long-term debt balance on our South Korean debt and a lower interest rate, offset by a $1.2 million (ZAR 16.0 million) guarantee fee that was expensed related to the financing for the Blue Label Telecoms Limited investment that was ultimately not pursued.

Fiscal 2017 tax expense was $42.5 million (ZAR 578.4 million) compared to $42.1 million (ZAR 605.3 million) in fiscal 2016. Our effective tax rate for the fiscal 2017, was 37.1% and was higher than the South African statutory rate as a result of non-deductible expenses (including consulting and legal fees) and the tax impact attributable to distributions from our South African subsidiary. Our effective tax rate for the fiscal 2016, was 33.3% and was higher than the South African statutory rate as a result of non-deductible expenses (including consulting and legal fees) and the tax impact, including withholding taxes, of approximately $6.2 million attributable to distributions from our South African subsidiary.

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Earnings from equity-accounted investments for fiscal 2017 have increased primarily due to the inclusion of our portion of Finbond’s net income. Finbond is listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and reports its six-month results during our first half and its annual results during our fourth quarter.

Results of operations by operating segment

The composition of revenue and the contributions of our business activities to operating income are illustrated below

South African transaction processing

In ZAR, the increase in revenue and operating income from our South African transaction processing segment was primarily due to higher EPE transaction revenue as a result of increased usage of our ATMs, increased inter-segment transaction processing activities, and a modest increase in the number of social welfare grants distributed.

Operating income margin in our South African transaction processing segment for each of fiscal 2017 and 2016 was 24%. Our fiscal 2017 margin includes higher EPE revenue as a result of increased ATM transactions, an increase in inter-segment transaction processing activities, an increase in the number of beneficiaries paid in fiscal 2017 and a modest increase in the margin of transaction fees generated from cardholders using the South African National Payment System, which was partially offset by annual salary increases granted to our South African employees.

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International transaction-based activities

In calendar 2016, South Korean regulators introduced specific regulations governing the fees that may be charged on card transactions, as is the case in most other developed economies. These regulations have a direct impact on card issuers in South Korea and, consistent with global practices, card issuers have renegotiated their fees with South Korean VAN companies, including KSNET, which has had an adverse impact on KSNET’s financial performance.

Revenue from our International transaction processing segment increased during fiscal 2017, primarily due to the inclusion of T24 and Masterpayment; however, this growth was partially offset by a lower contribution from KSNET due to the regulatory changes. Operating income from our International transaction processing segment during fiscal 2017 was lower due to a decrease in revenue at KSNET; losses incurred by Masterpayment as it grows its staff complement to execute its expansion plan into new markets and an allowance for credit losses related to a specific customer of $3.8 million; and ongoing ZAZOO start-up costs in the UK and India, which was partially offset by a positive contribution by T24. Operating income and margin for fiscal 2017 was also positively impacted by a refund of approximately $0.8 million that had been paid several years ago in connection with industry-wide litigation that has now been finalized.

Operating income margin in our International transaction processing segment for fiscal 2017 and 2016, was 8% and 14%, respectively.

Financial inclusion and applied technologies

In ZAR, revenue and operating income from our Financial inclusion and applied technologies segment decreased primarily due to the introduction of our new biometric linking feature for prepaid airtime and other value added services, which adversely impacted sales, as well as fewer ad hoc terminal sales, partially offset by increased volumes in our lending and insurance businesses, an increase in inter-segment revenues and higher card sales.

Operating income margin from our Financial inclusion and applied technologies segment was 24% and 22%, during fiscal 2017 and 2016, respectively, and has increased primarily due to improved revenues from our lending and insurance businesses and an increase in inter-segment revenues and fewer low margin prepaid product sales, offset by fewer ad hoc terminal sales and annual salary increases granted to our South African employees.

Corporate/ Eliminations

Our corporate expenses generally include acquisition-related intangible asset amortization; expenses incurred related to acquisitions and investments pursued; expenditure related to compliance with Sarbanes; non-employee directors’ fees; employee and executive bonuses; stock-based compensation; legal fees; audit fees; directors and officers insurance premiums; telecommunications expenses; property-related expenditures including utilities, rental, security and maintenance; and elimination entries.

During fiscal 2017, our corporate expenses have increased primarily due to the separation payment made to our former chief executive officer, higher transaction-related expenditures and amortization costs and modest increases in U.S. dollar denominated goods and services purchased from third parties and directors’ fees. These increases were partially offset by lower stock-based compensation charges; lower provision for incentives, including no cash incentive award for fiscal 2017 for the chief executive officer and chief financial officer; and the impact of the stronger U.S. dollar on goods and services procured in other currencies, primarily the ZAR. Our fiscal 2016 corporate expenses include the fair value gain on re-measurement of the previously held interest related to the T24 acquisition and the gain resulting from the change in accounting for Finbond.

Fiscal 2016 Compared to Fiscal 2015

The following factors had an influence on our results of operations during fiscal 2016 as compared with the same period in the prior year:

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Consolidated overall results of operations

This discussion is based on the amounts which were prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

The following tables show the changes in the items comprising our statements of operations, both in U.S. dollars and in ZAR:

In ZAR, the increase in revenue was primarily due to higher prepaid airtime sales, more low-margin transaction fees generated from cardholders using the South African National Payment System, more fees generated from our new EPE and ATM offerings, an increase in the number of SASSA UEPS/ EMV beneficiaries paid, a higher contribution from KSNET and more ad hoc terminal sales, partially offset by lower UEPS-loans fees.

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In ZAR, the increase in cost of goods sold, IT processing, servicing and support was primarily due to higher expenses incurred from increased usage of the South African National Payment System by beneficiaries, expenses incurred to roll-out our new EPE and ATM offerings and expanding our branch network, and more prepaid airtime sold.

In ZAR, our selling, general and administration expense increased due to a higher staff complement resulting from our EPE roll-out, as well as increases in goods and services purchased from third parties, offset by a $1.9 million fair value gain resulting from the acquisition of Transact24 and a gain of ZAR 30 million ($2.2 million) resulting from the change in accounting for Finbond due to the appointment of our representative to Finbond’s board of directors.

Our operating income margin for fiscal 2016 and 2015 was 19% and 21%, respectively. We discuss the components of operating income margin under “—Results of operations by operating segment.” The decrease is primarily attributable to the higher cost of goods sold, IT processing, servicing and support referred to above and an increase in depreciation expenses.

In ZAR, depreciation and amortization increased primarily as a result of an increase in depreciation related to more terminals used to provide transaction processing in Korea, the roll-out of EPE ATMs and an increase in acquisition-related intangible asset amortization resulting from the Transact24 and Masterpayment transactions, all partially offset by lower overall amortization of intangible assets that are now fully amortized.

In ZAR, interest on surplus cash increased to $15.3 million (ZAR 220.0 million) from $16.4 million (ZAR 186.9 million), due primarily to higher average daily ZAR cash balances and ZAR interest rates, partially offset by the lower interest earned on the USD cash reserves that we converted from ZAR through distributions from our South African subsidiary.

Interest expense decreased to $3.4 million (ZAR 49.2 million) from $4.5 million (ZAR 50.9 million), due to a lower average long-term debt balance on our South Korean debt and a lower interest rate.

Fiscal 2016 tax expense was $42.1 million (ZAR 605.3 million) compared to $44.1 million (ZAR 504.4 million) in fiscal 2015. Our effective tax rate for the fiscal 2016, was 33.3% and was higher than the South African statutory rate as a result of non-deductible expenses (including consulting and legal fees) and the tax impact, including withholding taxes, of approximately $6.2 million attributable to distributions from our South African subsidiary. Our effective tax rate for fiscal 2015, was 31.4% and was higher than the South African statutory rate as a result of non-deductible expenses (including consulting and legal).

Results of operations by operating segment

The composition of revenue and the contributions of our business activities to operating income are illustrated below

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South African transaction processing

In ZAR, the increase in segment revenue and operating income was primarily due to higher EPE transaction revenue as a result of increased usage of our ATMs, more low-margin transaction fees generated from card holders using the South African National Payment System, increased inter-segment transaction processing activities, and a modest increase in the number of social welfare grants distributed.

Operating income margin in our South African transaction processing segment for fiscal 2016 and 2015 was 24% and 22%, respectively, and has increased primarily due a modest increase in the margin on transaction fees generated from cardholders using the South African National Payment System and to an increase in the number of beneficiaries paid in fiscal 2016.

International transaction-based activities

Revenue from our International transaction processing segment increased primarily due to higher transaction volume at KSNET during fiscal 2016 and the inclusion of the contribution from Transact24 and Masterpayment. Operating income during fiscal 2016 was lower due to an increase in depreciation expense and ongoing ZAZOO start-up costs in the United Kingdom and India, but was partially offset by an increase in revenue contribution from KSNET and a positive contribution from Transact24, Masterpayment and XeoHealth.

Operating income and operating income margin in our International transaction processing segment for fiscal 2015, were positively impacted by a refund of approximately $1.7 million that had been paid several years ago in connection with industry-wide litigation. Operating income margin for fiscal 2016 and 2015, was 14% and 16%, respectively.

Financial inclusion and applied technologies

In ZAR, revenue and operating income from our Financial inclusion and applied technologies segment increased primarily due to higher prepaid airtime and other value-added services sales, more ad hoc terminal and card sales and, in ZAR, an increase in inter-segment revenues, offset by lower lending service fees. Operating income for fiscal 2016, was adversely impacted by establishment costs for Smart Life and expansion of our branch network.

Operating income margin from our Financial inclusion and applied technologies segment was 22% and 27%, during fiscal 2016 and 2015, respectively, and has decreased primarily due to the sale of more low-margin prepaid airtime and establishment costs for Smart Life and expansion of our branch network.

Corporate/ Eliminations

In USD, our corporate expenses have decreased primarily due to the impact of the stronger USD on goods and services procured in other currencies, primarily the ZAR, lower amortization costs, lower executive cash incentive awards, the fair value gain resulting from the acquisition of Transact24 and the gain resulting from the change in accounting for Finbond, partially offset by modest increases in USD denominated goods and services purchased from third parties and directors’ fees.

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Liquidity and Capital Resources

At June 30, 2017, our cash balances were $258.5 million, which comprised U.S. dollar-denominated balances of $60.0 million, ZAR-denominated balances of ZAR 1.8 billion ($141.5 million), KRW-denominated balances of KRW 55.0 billion ($48.1 million) and other currency deposits, primarily euro, of $8.9 million. The increase in our cash balances from June 30, 2016, was primarily due to the sale of 5 million shares of our common stock and expansion of most of our core businesses, which was partially offset by the repurchase of shares of our common stock; unscheduled voluntary repayments of our Korean debt; payment of taxes; the investment in MobiKwik, Malta FS and Pros Software; a loan to Finbond and capital expenditures.

We currently believe that our cash and credit facilities are sufficient to fund our future operations for at least the next four quarters.

We generally invest the surplus cash held by our South African operations in overnight call accounts that we maintain at South African banking institutions, and surplus cash held by our non-South African companies in U.S. dollar denominated money market accounts. We have invested surplus cash in Korea in short-term investment accounts at Korean banking institutions.

Historically, we have financed most of our operations, research and development, working capital, capital expenditures and acquisitions through internally generated cash. When considering whether to borrow under our financing facilities, we consider the cost of capital, cost of financing, opportunity cost of utilizing surplus cash and availability of tax efficient structures to moderate financing costs. For instance, in July 2017, we obtained loan facilities from South African banks to fund a portion of our investment in Cell C and a portion of our working capital requirements. Refer to Note 14 to our consolidated financial statements for the year ended June 30, 2017, for additional information related to these loan facilities.

We have a short-term South African credit facility with Nedbank of ZAR 400 million ($30.6 million), which consists of (i) a primary amount of up to ZAR 200 million, which is immediately available, and (ii) a secondary amount of up to ZAR 200 million, which is not immediately available. The primary amounts comprise an overdraft facility of up to ZAR 50 million and indirect and derivative facilities of up to ZAR 150 million, which include letters of guarantee, letters of credit and forward exchange contracts. On December 9, 2016, Nedbank agreed to temporarily increase the overdraft facility by the secondary amount of ZAR 200 million to ZAR 250 million.

As of June 30, 2017, we had used none of the overdraft and ZAR 130.5 million ($10.0 million, translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017) of the indirect and derivative facilities to obtain foreign exchange contracts and to support guarantees issued by Nedbank to various third parties on our behalf. Refer to Note 12 to the consolidated financial statements for more information about the terms of this facility.

We obtained EUR 40.0 million ($45.7 million) and CHF 20 million ($20.9 million) revolving overdraft facilities from Bank Frick. As of June 30, 2017, we had utilized approximately CHF 15.9 million ($16.6 million) of the CHF 20 million facility and had not utilized any of the EUR 40 million facility. As of June 30, 2017, the interest rate on each of these facilities was 5.00%. We have assigned all claims against amounts due from Masterpayment customers, which have been financed from the CHF 20 million facility, plus all secondary rights and preferential rights as collateral for this facility to Bank Frick. Our Masterpayment subsidiary was required to open a primary business account with Bank Frick, and this account has been pledged to Bank Frick as collateral for the EUR 40 million facility. The initial term of the EUR 40 million facility ends on December 31, 2019, but it will automatically be extended for one year if it is not terminated with 12 months written notice. The CHF 20 million facility does not have a fixed term; however, it may be terminated by either party with six months written notice at the end of a calendar month.

As of June 30, 2017, we had outstanding long-term debt of KRW 18.6 billion (approximately $16.2 million translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017) under credit facilities with a group of South Korean banks. The loans bear interest at the South Korean CD rate in effect from time to time (1.41% as of June 30, 2017) plus a margin of 3.10% for one of the term loan facilities and the revolver and a margin of 2.90% for the other term loan facility. We made a scheduled repayment of KRW 10 billion ($8.8 million) on April 29, 2017. Scheduled remaining repayments of the term loans and loan under the revolving credit facility are as follows: April 2018 (KRW 10 billion) and October 2018 (KRW 8.6 billion plus all outstanding loans under our revolving credit facility).

On July 29, 2016, we prepaid KRW 20 billion ($17.8 million) of the Facility A loan and KRW 10 billion ($8.9 million) of our Facility C revolving credit facility; both prepayments were translated at exchange rates applicable as of the payment date. Refer to Note 14 to the consolidated financial statements for more information about the terms of this facility.

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We have a unique cash flow cycle due to the funding mechanism under our SASSA contact and our pre-funding of certain merchants. We generally receive the grant funds 48 hours prior to the provision of the service in a trust account and any interest we earn on these amounts is for the benefit of SASSA. We are required to initiate payments before the start of the pay cycle month in order to have cash, merchant and interbank funds available when the payment cycle commences and this process requires that we have access to the grant funds to be paid. These funds are recorded as settlement assets and liabilities. Historically, we opened the pay cycle at certain participating merchants a few days before the payment of grants at pay sites, however, currently we do not commence the payment cycle at participating merchants before the start of the pay cycle month.

We use our funds to pre-fund certain merchants for grants paid through our merchant acquiring system on our behalf a day or two before the pay cycle opens. We typically reimburse merchants that are not pre-funded within 48 hours after they distribute the grants to the social welfare recipient cardholders.

In addition, as a transaction processor, we receive cash from:

These funds do not represent cash that is available to us and we present these funds, and the associated liability, outside of our current assets and liabilities on our consolidated balance sheet. Movements in these cash balances are presented in investing activities and movements in the obligations are presented in financing activities in our consolidated statement of cash flows.

Cash flows from operating activities

In ZAR, cash flows from operating activities for fiscal 2017 decreased to $97.2 million (ZAR 1.3 billion) from $116.6 million (ZAR 1.7 billion) for fiscal 2016. Excluding the impact of interest received, interest paid under our Korean debt and taxes presented in the table below, the decrease relates primarily to the growth of Masterpayment’s working capital finance offering and the separation payment made to our former chief executive officer, offset by an increase in cash from operating activities resulted from improved trading activity during fiscal 2017. During fiscal 2017, we paid interest of $1.5 million under our South Korean debt facility.

In ZAR, cash flows from operating activities for fiscal 2016 increased to $116.6 million (ZAR 1.7 billion) from $135.3 million (ZAR 1.5 billion) for fiscal 2015. Excluding the impact of interest received, interest paid under our Korean debt and taxes presented in the table below, the increase in cash from operating activities resulted from improved trading activity during fiscal 2016. During fiscal 2016, we paid interest of $3.3 million under our South Korean debt facility.

During fiscal 2017, we made a first provisional tax payment of $18.2 million (ZAR 252.0 million) and a second provisional tax payment of $17.2 million (ZAR 221.7 million) related to our 2017 tax year in South Africa. We paid dividend withholding taxes of $1.5 million (ZAR 21.3 million). We also paid taxes totaling $8.1 million in other tax jurisdictions, primarily South Korea.

During fiscal 2016, we made a first provisional tax payment of $16.0 million (ZAR 239.9 million) and a second provisional tax payment of $13.7 million (ZAR 207.3 million) related to our 2016 tax year in South Africa. We paid dividend withholding taxes of $4.2 million (ZAR 60.0 million). We also paid taxes totaling $5.0 million in other tax jurisdictions, primarily South Korea.

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Taxes paid during fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015 were as follows:

We expect to pay additional second provisional payments in South Africa of approximately $1.9 million (ZAR 25.2 million translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017) related to our 2017 tax year in the first quarter of fiscal 2018.

Cash flows from investing activities

Cash used in investing activities for fiscal 2017 includes capital expenditure of $11.2 million (ZAR 152.5 million), primarily for the acquisition of payment processing terminals in Korea. Our Korean capital expenditures have declined due to regulatory changes in South Korea, which now prohibit the provision of payment equipment to the majority of merchants.

Cash used in investing activities for fiscal 2016 includes capital expenditure of $35.8 million (ZAR 514.9 million), primarily for the acquisition of payment processing terminals in Korea and the rollout of ATMs in South Africa.

Cash used in investing activities for fiscal 2015 includes capital expenditure of $36.4 million (ZAR 416.4 million), primarily for the acquisition of payment processing terminals in Korea and the rollout of ATMs in South Africa.

During fiscal 2017, we paid approximately $25.8 million for an approximate 13.5% interest in MobiKwik; provided a $10.0 million loan to Finbond; provided a $2.0 million loan to KZ One and paid approximately $2.9 million and $1.7 million, respectively, net of cash received, to acquire 100% of each of Malta FS and Pros Software’s ordinary shares.

During fiscal 2016, we paid approximately $14.8 million and $1.7 million, respectively, net of cash received, to acquire 60% of Masterpayment and approximately 56% of Transact24’s ordinary shares. We also exercised our rights under the Finbond rights offer and paid approximately $8.9 million (ZAR 136.1 million) to acquire an additional 40,733,723 shares of common stock of Finbond.

During fiscal 2015, we paid $13.2 million for non-controlling interests in businesses based in Nigeria and Hong Kong.

Cash flows from financing activities

During fiscal 2017, we sold 5 million shares of our common stock for $45.0 million and received approximately $2.9 million from the exercise of stock options. We also paid approximately $45.3 million to repurchase 4,407,360 shares of our common stock and also paid $0.5 million, on July 1, 2016, related to settlement of amounts outstanding related to the repurchases at the end of June 2016. We also made a $28.5 million unscheduled repayment of our Korean debt, made a scheduled $7.4 million Korean debt repayment, utilized approximately $0.8 million of our Korean borrowings to pay quarterly interest due and utilized approximately $16.2 million of our CHF facilities. In addition, we paid a guarantee fee of $1.1 million related to the guarantee issued by RMB and paid a dividend of approximately $2.1 million to certain of our non-controlling interests.

During fiscal 2016, we received approximately $107.7 million from the issue of 9,984,311 shares of our common stock and approximately $3.8 million from the exercise of stock options. We made scheduled Korean long-term debt repayments of approximately $8.7 million, and utilized approximately $2.1 million of our Korean borrowings to pay quarterly interest due. We also acquired 2,426,704 shares of our common stock and paid approximately $26.6 million during fiscal 2016 and the remaining $0.5 million on July 1, 2016, related to these repurchases and, in June 2016, paid approximately $11.2 million for all of the shares of Masterpayment that we did not already own.

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During fiscal 2015, we made a scheduled Korean debt repayment of $14.1 million, repurchased BVI’s remaining 1,837,432 shares of Net1 common stock for approximately $9.2 million, received $1.4 million from BVI for 12.5% of CPS’ issued and outstanding ordinary shares and paid a dividend of $1.0 million to certain of our non-controlling interests. We also utilized approximately $3.8 million of our Korean borrowings to pay quarterly interest due and received approximately $2.0 million from the exercise of stock options.

Contractual Obligations

The following table sets forth our contractual obligations as of June 30, 2017:

Off-Balance Sheet Arrangements

We have no off-balance sheet arrangements.

Capital Expenditures

Capital expenditures for the years ended June 30, 2017, 2016 and 2015 were as follows:

Our capital expenditures for fiscal 2017, 2016 and 2015, are discussed under “—Liquidity and Capital Resources—Cash flows from investing activities.”

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All of our capital expenditures for the past three fiscal years were funded through internally-generated funds. We had outstanding capital commitments as of June 30, 2017, of $0.1 million related mainly to computer equipment required to maintain and expand operations. We expect to fund these expenditures through internally-generated funds. In addition to these capital expenditures, we expect that capital spending for fiscal 2018 will also relate to expanding our operations in South Korea and South Africa.

We seek to reduce our exposure to currencies other than the South African rand, or ZAR, through a policy of matching, to the extent possible, assets and liabilities denominated in those currencies. In addition, we use financial instruments to economically hedge our exposure to exchange rate and interest rate fluctuations arising from our operations. We are also exposed to equity price and liquidity risks as well as credit risks.

Currency Exchange Risk

We are subject to currency exchange risk because we purchase inventories that we are required to settle in other currencies, primarily the euro and U.S. dollar. We have used forward contracts to limit our exposure in these transactions to fluctuations in exchange rates between the ZAR, on the one hand, and the U.S. dollar and the euro, on the other hand. As of June 30, 2017 and 2016, our outstanding foreign exchange contracts were as follows:

As of June 30, 2017

None.

As of June 30, 2016

Translation Risk

Translation risk relates to the risk that our results of operations will vary significantly as the U.S. dollar is our reporting currency, but we earn most of our revenues and incur most of our expenses in ZAR. The U.S. dollar to ZAR exchange rate has fluctuated significantly over the past three years. As exchange rates are outside our control, there can be no assurance that future fluctuations will not adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition.

Interest Rate Risk

As a result of our normal borrowing and leasing activities, our operating results are exposed to fluctuations in interest rates, which we manage primarily through our regular financing activities. In addition, outstanding indebtedness under our long-term South Korean debt facilities bear interest at the South Korean CD rate plus 3.10%. As interest rates, and specifically the South Korean CD rate, are outside our control, there can be no assurance that future increases in interest rates, specifically the South Korean CD rate, will not adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition. As of June 30, 2017, the South Korean CD rate was 1.41%.

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The following table illustrates the effect on our annual expected interest charge, translated at exchange rates applicable as of June 30, 2017, as a result of a change in the South Korean CD rate. The effects of a hypothetical 1% (i.e. 100 basis points) increase and a 1% decrease in the South Korean CD rate as of June 30, 2017, is shown. The selected 1% hypothetical change does not reflect what could be considered the best or worst case scenarios.

We generally maintain limited investment in cash equivalents and have occasionally invested in marketable securities. The interest earned on our bank balances and short term cash investments is dependent on the prevailing interest rates in the jurisdictions where our cash reserves are invested.

Credit Risk

Credit risk relates to the risk of loss that we would incur as a result of non-performance by counterparties. We maintain credit risk policies with regard to our counterparties to minimize overall credit risk. These policies include an evaluation of a potential counterparty’s financial condition, credit rating, and other credit criteria and risk mitigation tools as our management deems appropriate.

With respect to credit risk on financial instruments, we maintain a policy of entering into such transactions only with South African and European financial institutions that have a credit rating of BB+ or better, as determined by credit rating agencies such as Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch Ratings.

Microlending credit risk

We are exposed to credit risk in our microlending activities, which provides unsecured short-term loans to qualifying customers. We manage this risk by performing an affordability test for each prospective customer and assign a “creditworthiness score”, which takes into account a variety of factors such as other debts and total expenditures on normal household and lifestyle expenses.

Equity Price and Liquidity Risk

Equity price risk relates to the risk of loss that we would incur as a result of the volatility in the exchange-traded price of equity securities that we hold and the risk that we may not be able to liquidate these securities. We have invested in approximately 26% of the issued share capital of Finbond which are exchange-traded equity securities and from April 1, 2016, accounted for using the equity method. The fair value of these securities as of June 30, 2017, represented approximately 1% of our total assets, including these securities. We expect to hold these securities for an extended period of time and we are not concerned with short-term equity price volatility with respect to these securities provided that the underlying business, economic and management characteristics of the company remain sound.

The market price of these securities may fluctuate for a variety of reasons, consequently, the amount we may obtain in a subsequent sale of these securities may significantly differ from the reported market value.

Liquidity risk relates to the risk of loss that we would incur as a result of the lack of liquidity on the exchange on which these securities are listed. We may not be able to sell some or all of these securities at one time, or over an extended period of time without influencing the exchange traded price, or at all. We monitor these investments for impairment and make appropriate reductions in carrying value when an impairment is deemed to be other-than-temporary.

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Our consolidated financial statements, together with the report of our independent registered public accounting firm, appear on pages F-1 through F-61 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Not applicable.

Evaluation of disclosure controls and procedures

Under the supervision and with the participation of our management, including our chief executive officer and chief financial officer, we conducted an evaluation of our disclosure controls and procedures, as such term is defined under Rule 13a-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Based on this evaluation, our chief executive officer and chief financial officer concluded that our disclosure controls and procedures were effective as of June 30, 2017.

Internal Control over Financial Reporting

Internal control over financial reporting is a process designed by, or under the supervision of, our chief executive officer and chief financial officer, or persons performing similar functions, and effected by our board of directors, management, and other personnel, to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

Internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that (1) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of our assets; (2) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with U.S. GAAP, and that receipts and expenditures of the company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of our officers and directors; and (3) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use or disposition of our assets that could have a material effect on our consolidated financial statements.

Inherent Limitations in Internal Control over Financial Reporting

Internal control over financial reporting cannot provide absolute assurance of achieving financial reporting objectives because of its inherent limitations. Internal control over financial reporting is a process that involves human diligence and compliance and is subject to lapses in judgment and breakdowns resulting from human failures. Internal control over financial reporting also can be circumvented by collusion or improper management override. Because of such limitations, there is a risk that material misstatements may not be prevented or detected on a timely basis by internal control over financial reporting. However, these inherent limitations are known features of the financial reporting process. Therefore, it is possible to design into the process safeguards to reduce, though not eliminate, this risk.

Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting

Management, including our chief executive officer and chief financial officer, is responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate internal control over our financial reporting. Management conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting based on the Internal Control – Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission in 2013. Based on this evaluation, management concluded that our internal control over financial reporting was effective as of June 30, 2017. Deloitte & Touche (South Africa), our independent registered public accounting firm, has issued an audit report on our internal control over financial reporting.

Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting

There were no changes in our internal control over financial reporting during the most recent fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2017, that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.

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REPORT OF INDEPENDENT REGISTERED PUBLIC ACCOUNTING FIRM

To the Board of Directors and Shareholders of Net 1 UEPS Technologies, Inc.
Johannesburg, South Africa

We have audited the internal control over financial reporting of Net 1 UEPS Technologies, Inc. and subsidiaries (the “Company”) as of June 30, 2017, based on criteria established in Internal Control — Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission. The Company's management is responsible for maintaining effective internal control over financial reporting and for its assessment of the effectiveness of internal control over financial reporting, included in the accompanying Management’s Report on Internal Control Over Financial Reporting. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on the Company's internal control over financial reporting based on our audit.

We conducted our audit in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States). Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether effective internal control over financial reporting was maintained in all material respects. Our audit included obtaining an understanding of internal control over financial reporting, assessing the risk that a material weakness exists, testing and evaluating the design and operating effectiveness of internal control based on the assessed risk, and performing such other procedures as we considered necessary in the circumstances. We believe that our audit provides a reasonable basis for our opinion.

A company's internal control over financial reporting is a process designed by, or under the supervision of, the company's principal executive and principal financial officers, or persons performing similar functions, and effected by the company's board of directors, management, and other personnel to provide reasonable assurance regarding the reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A company's internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that (1) pertain to the maintenance of records that, in reasonable detail, accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the company; (2) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and that receipts and expenditures of the company are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of the company; and (3) provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use, or disposition of the company's assets that could have a material effect on the financial statements.

Because of the inherent limitations of internal control over financial reporting, including the possibility of collusion or improper management override of controls, material misstatements due to error or fraud may not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. Also, projections of any evaluation of the effectiveness of the internal control over financial reporting to future periods are subject to the risk that the controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may deteriorate.

In our opinion, the Company maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of June 30, 2017, based on the criteria established in Internal Control — Integrated Framework (2013) issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission.

We have also audited, in accordance with the standards of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States), the consolidated financial statements as of and for the year ended June 30, 2017 of the Company and our report dated August 24, 2017, expressed an unqualified opinion on those financial statements.

/s/ Deloitte & Touche
Registered Auditors
Johannesburg, South Africa

August 24, 2017

National Executive: *LL Bam Chief Executive Officer *TMM Jordan Deputy Chief Executive Officer
*MJ Jarvis Chief Operating Officer *AF Mackie Audit & Assurance *N Sing Risk Advisory *NB Kader Tax TP Pillay
Consulting S Gwala BPS *K Black Clients & Industries *JK Mazzocco Talent & Transformation MG Dicks Risk Independence & Legal *TJ Brown Chairman of the Board

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None.

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PART III

Information about our executive officers is set out in Part I, Item 1 under the caption “Executive Officers and Significant Employees of the Registrant.” The other information required by this Item is incorporated by reference to the sections of our definitive proxy statement for our 2017 annual meeting of shareholders entitled “Board of Directors and Corporate Governance” and “Additional Information.”

The information required by this Item is incorporated by reference to the sections of our definitive proxy statement for our 2017 annual meeting of shareholders entitled “Executive Compensation,” “Board of Directors and Corporate Governance—Compensation of Directors” and “—Remuneration Committee Interlocks and Insider Participation.”

The information required by this Item is incorporated by reference to the sections of our definitive proxy statement for our 2017 annual meeting of shareholders entitled “Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management” and “Equity Compensation Plan Information.”

The information required by this Item is incorporated by reference to the sections of our definitive proxy statement for our 2017 annual meeting of shareholders entitled “Certain Relationships and Related Transactions” and “Board of Directors and Corporate Governance.”

The information required by this Item is incorporated by reference to the sections of our definitive proxy statement for our 2017 annual meeting of shareholders entitled “Audit and Non-Audit Fees.”

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PART IV

The following financial statements are included on pages F-1 through F-61.

Financial statement schedules have been omitted since they are either not required, not applicable, or the information is otherwise included.

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