When people hear that Chanelle Badenhorst is a Mrs South Africa finalist, the conversation tends to go one place first: the pageant. As a payments specialist working inside one of South Africa’s largest retailers, she helps keep the invisible machinery of a payment gateway running smoothly for millions of customers who never think about it at all.

A Career Built at the Intersection of Technology, People, and Problem-Solving

Chanelle didn’t set out to work in payments. Like a lot of people in the industry, she ended up there almost by accident – and stayed because the work turned out to be more human than she expected.

“It’s an intersection of technology, problem-solving, and people,” she says of the industry. That framing matters, because it’s easy to assume payments work is purely technical: gateways, integrations, reconciliation, compliance. But for Chanelle, the real measure of a good solution isn’t how sophisticated it is on the backend – it’s whether the customer ever has to think about it.

“A technically impressive solution is worthless if it creates friction for the user,” she says. Staying close to the customer, in her view, is non-negotiable. It’s the difference between a payment gateway that just works and one that quietly becomes a source of frustration nobody bothers to fix – which is also why she’s glad to see partners like Peach Payments building infrastructure with that same customer-first philosophy front and centre.

Navigating a Male-Dominated Industry

Fintech and payments remain heavily male-dominated, particularly in senior technical and decision-making roles, and Chanelle’s early career reflected that. She admits she felt pressure to prove herself from the outset – to be loud enough, visible enough, technical enough to be taken seriously.

Over time, her thinking shifted. “Success doesn’t require being the loudest person in the room,” she says. What matters more is staying curious, understanding the industry deeply, and being willing to keep asking questions – even the ones that might seem basic. That mindset, she says, has served her far better than trying to perform confidence she didn’t yet feel.

Advice for Young South African Women Considering Fintech

Chanelle is direct about the one thing she wants young women to stop believing: that you need to already be technical to belong in payments.

“Those skills can be learned,” she says simply. What can’t be taught as easily is curiosity, adaptability, and a willingness to be uncomfortable and in an industry being reshaped by AI and constant innovation, that willingness is arguably more valuable than any technical head start. Her advice isn’t to wait until you feel ready. It’s to get in, stay proactive, and let the technical fluency catch up.

Where the Boardroom Meets the Sash

Balancing a demanding payments career with being a Mrs South Africa finalist and a mother might look like juggling two unrelated worlds. Chanelle sees it differently — she sees the overlap.

“The payments industry taught me to solve problems and hold my own in meetings,” she explains. “Mrs South Africa gave me the confidence to be visible and tell my story.” Rather than one identity competing with the other, each has sharpened a different muscle. It’s led her to a broader realisation that she’s keen to pass on: women don’t have to pick a lane. Career, motherhood, competing, advocacy — they can, and often must, coexist.

That multidimensionality isn’t theoretical for Chanelle. At 33, a medical emergency while running revealed a heart condition, leading to a pacemaker she’s affectionately named “Electra.” It forced a complete overhaul of her schedule and working hours and gave her what she calls a second chance, one that now fuels how she shows up in her career, her parenting, and her marriage. In a twist she still finds surprising for a former school sprinter, she now runs endurance races to reduce her dependency on the pacemaker, having completed two Cape Town Marathons and more than twenty half marathons.

What Meaningful Representation Actually Requires

Asked what meaningful representation for women in finance looks like beyond Women’s Month campaigns and panel photos, Chanelle doesn’t hesitate: visibility alone isn’t enough.

“Give women the opportunity to lead big projects, make decisions, and grow into technical roles,” she says — not just a seat at the table, but a real hand in shaping what happens next. She pushes back specifically on the default assumption that a woman in the room is probably the least technical person present. Changing that assumption, she argues, is exactly the kind of work that needs to happen if more women are going to help shape the future direction of payments technology in South Africa.

Chanelle Badenhorst is a payments specialist and Mrs South Africa finalist based in South Africa. Peach Payments is sponsoring her on journey to take the crown.