Anonymous angels: PEP Lay-by initiative brings joy to customers

A few days ago, a mother shared a heartwarming story in a Facebook group called The Village, about her experience having gone into a PEP store to pay some money into the lay-by account she’d opened to fund her children’s school uniforms, and was told the balance was fully paid by a stranger. 

The woman, whose name was withheld, wrote: "When I got to the till, I was told by the cashier that an anonymous lady paid up my lay-by in full.

"Oh, my heart, I just wanted to cry in the store. The balance was over R1 500. I will never know who it is, but I hope this angel will be blessed in all areas of her life, forever…"

An initiative was started in the #ImStaying Facebook group for South Africans back in 2020, after news of a man who went and paid off every single outstanding lay-bys in a PEP store in Mossel Bay, late 2019.

The initiative then blossomed and was labeled the PEP Lay-by Buddy initiative in June 2020 where customers’ lay-bys are being paid off in full by anonymous donors in South Africa, and since then, PEP has recorded more than 46 200 donor-funded vouchers have been sent to customers to pay off their lay-bys.

According to PEP, contributions to the initiative totalled R3.2 million by the end of 2024, with most donors choosing to pay off lay-bys of school clothing.

Western Cape residents have been the most generous lay-by "buddies", with 37% of contributions being allocated to accounts in that province, followed by Gauteng (24%), KwaZulu-Natal (13%) and the Eastern Cape (11%).

Contributions can be made online from the value of R20 or in PEP stores from as little as R2, and are allocated to PEP lay-by customers in the form of a voucher.

PEP then randomly selects beneficiaries to receive a voucher and contacts them via SMS that they can then redeem it against the outstanding balance of their PEP lay-by or the store staff can contact customers to come collect the lay-by if it has been paid off in-store.

As a donor to the initiative, you can choose and stipulate the category of goods on lay-by you are contributing to, e.g. ‘school clothing’, 'baby', etc..

IOL