The new tools of the side hustle gig economy

Everybody hates Adobe now, and that is not a loaded or incorrect statement. Affinity is the new growing home for creativity. But, Affinity is now just a Canva deployment tool – if you want to use AI. And AI is everywhere.

If you are one of the estimated 2.3 million South African households with a side hustle, you already know the drill: the barrier to entry is more than just talent; it’s the tax you pay to big tech just to exist. For years, the creative tax was a monthly debit order to Silicon Valley that went up every time the rand went down.

But the winds are shifting. The tech giants are fighting a new war for the bottom of the pyramid, and for once, the little guy in Cape Town or Joburg stands to win.

Democratisation by design

Canva’s acquisition of Affinity wasn’t just a business merger; it was a declaration of war on the subscription fatigue that plagues the creator economy. While the headline news is the integration of these platforms, the real story for the South African freelancer is affordability.

Canva has been aggressive about what they call “localisation”. That doesn’t just mean translating the app into isiZulu or Afrikaans (although they’ve done that too, supporting seven of our 11 official languages). It means realising that a dollar-based subscription is a non-starter for a student in Soweto.

“If we’re going to empower Africans to design, we need to make sure they can buy Canva in local currency,” the company told media at its recent launch of a local presence, pivoting to daily and weekly pricing models.

And then there’s the nuclear bomb regarding Affinity. The platform – long the refuge for designers fleeing Adobe’s ecosystem – is being positioned as a tool that is effectively free for schools and nonprofits, with a “forever” model that challenges the rent-seeking behaviour of its competitors.

Grant Hinds, a veteran local content creator who has survived the various waves of the gig economy, is one of those who walked away.

“I have dropped my Adobe subscription for everything,” Hinds says. He now edits on DaVinci Resolve and relies on the Affinity/Canva stack, saying simply that his subscription costs are now “infinitely cheaper”.

Boring is money in the bank

But creating the content is only half the battle. The other half is the administrative nightmare that usually kills the side hustle before it becomes a main hustle.

For years, if you wanted professional invoicing, you had to pay for expensive US-based software. Hinds now points to Stub.africa, a local solution he calls “a South African version of FreshBooks”. It’s built for our tax system, handles depreciation of assets and doesn’t bleed your profit margins dry.

It’s part of a wider trend of first-world tech at third-world prices. Zoho Solo, a new entrant targeting the solopreneur, has launched with a mobile-first philosophy. They know you probably don’t have a dedicated admin laptop. You run your business from your phone between meetings or gigs.

Zoho’s free edition is shockingly generous – allowing up to 100 invoices a month before you pay a cent. And when you do pay, it’s priced for the local market (around R99/month for premium tiers), not a direct conversion of a US price point.

Add to this the rise of fintechs like Franc, which launched a Hustle Account to separate your business cash from your personal groceries, and Moya Money for freelancers, and you suddenly have a financial stack that costs a fraction of traditional business banking.

What this means for you
The gig economy is a main character. With one in three employed South Africans reporting a second income stream, we are a nation of side-hustlers by necessity.
The difference is that previously, the tools to professionalise that hustle were gated behind expensive enterprise pricing. Today, from the software you use to design your logo, to the app you use to invoice, to the machine you use to get paid, the playing field hasn’t just been levelled, it’s been discounted.

Disrupting payments

Perhaps the most tangible shift is happening at the point of sale. For the gig worker selling goods at a market or the plumber fixing a sink, the card machine was always a grudge purchase, expensive to rent, with transaction fees that ate up to 3% of your turnover.

Capitec has entered this space with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. They rebuilt their entire backend, cutting out the vendors and middlemen to slash fees.

Read more: Capitec has no mercy for fintech startups

“We cut out all the costs that we used to pay out to vendors in order to run our systems. So we’re entirely in control of how we structure our costs to our client,” head of payments Chris Zietsman says.

The result? If you’re a merchant processing R100,000 a month, you’re paying around 0.85% for debit card transactions. Compare that to the industry standard of nearly 3%, and you’re seeing real money staying in the small business owner’s pocket.

It’s no surprise Capitec has grown its merchant base by 200% since launching its new hardware in late 2024. DM