About
Campus Swap is a student marketplace starting at Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, and it's only the beginning.
The origin · 2024
In 2024, Bantu-Bethu Beya was sitting in his dorm room at res, staring at the NMU buy & sell WhatsApp group on his phone. Somewhere in 400 unread messages was the second-hand textbook he needed, but it had already been sold two hours ago, buried under memes, airtime requests, and announcements that had nothing to do with buying or selling anything.
It wasn't just frustrating. It was a problem every student on campus lived with every semester, scrolling, missing out, paying full price for new textbooks when a classmate two floors up had exactly what you needed.
That night, the idea for Campus Swap was born. Not just a cleaner group chat, but a proper marketplace, searchable, verified, with real payment protection, built by a student who understood the problem from the inside.
You know the group. Every NMU student has joined it at some point. Within an hour, you mute it.
The group is a flood of noise, memes, airtime requests, random announcements, and the occasional item post buried under 300 unread messages. By the time you see it, it's sold. Or the seller ghosts you. Or you meet a stranger with cash and hope for the best.
Campus Swap replaces all of it. A searchable, distraction-free marketplace where every user is verified, every payment is protected, and every listing is there until it's sold.
The vision
Campus Swap is more than a marketplace. It's the foundation for a new kind of financial and digital infrastructure for South African students, with verified identities, secure peer-to-peer payments, and a trusted community layer built from the ground up.
Verified identity layer
University email verification is just the start. A trusted digital identity for every student in South Africa.
Peer-to-peer FinTech
Escrow payments, instant settlement, and buyer protection, building the rails for student financial transactions.
Every campus in SA
Starting at NMU, expanding to every university. One platform, millions of students, infinite possibilities.
Every user is verified with a university email. Escrow payments and campus meetups keep both buyers and sellers protected at every step.
Buyer and seller reviews build real reputations. You know exactly who you're trading with before you commit to anything.
Zero listing fees, ever. Sellers keep more, buyers spend less. We take a small fee only when a transaction completes.
Bantu-Bethu Beya
Founder & Developer, Bay Software
Gqeberha, Eastern Cape · Started 2024
Bantu-Bethu is the founder of Bay Software and the developer behind Campus Swap. The idea came to him in his dorm room at res in 2024, born out of the daily frustration of trying to buy and sell as a student with no real tools to do it safely.
He believes Campus Swap is more than a student marketplace, it's the beginning of a broader ICT and FinTech play that could reshape how young South Africans transact, build credit history, and access financial services. Starting on campus, going nationwide.
Join the waitlist and get early access when we launch in February 2026.