Yoco to deepen SA presence

YOCO WANTS to deepen its market presence in South Africa and expand into Africa and the Middle East (Mesa) region over the next two years, says Yoco vice-president for commercial, Matthew Brownell.

He said with more than 150 000 businesses on their platform, the goal was to reach at least a million merchants within the next four years.

“More than 6 million small businesses in South Africa and well over 100 million across the Middle East and Africa still transact only in cash. These entrepreneurs are seeing a growing demand for cashless payments, however they are faced with barriers to providing this due to limited affordable options available to them,” said Brownell.

Yoco provides digital payment solutions to small, medium and micro enterprises that lower the barriers of entry and grow financial inclusion.

Brownell said small businesses were the lifeblood of the economy and they believed it was their responsibility to enable them to thrive, driving their vision of open commerce forward.

He said their offering spoke directly to small businesses.

“We’ve recently partnered with more than 700 retail stores nationwide, to allow more merchants access to affordable and efficient electronic card machines and financial tools to start and run their businesses.

“Yoco believes in the principle of responsible innovation. It’s our intention to make it as easy as possible for small businesses to begin accepting card payments as soon as possible, while at the same time Yoco strives to adhere to the strictest standards of due diligence when identifying and verifying merchants that sign up to our platform.”

Brownell said to do this, the company had been focussing its attention on scaling their software capabilities, ensuring businesses had a world-class service at their fingertips that could help grow their operations.

The platform said it had also made onboarding easy as merchants could be up and running and taking payments within a few minutes.

It also offered many value-added services such as software tools for point of-sale-management and business intelligence.

By providing easy access to affordable products and payment solutions, Yoco said it was one step closer to growing financial inclusion for small businesses across South Africa which was at the core of its business.

“To date, the Yoco platform has become the preferred digital payments solution for over 150 000 small and micro merchants across South Africa, processing more than $1 billion (about R14.5bn) in payments a year. This is just the beginning,” he said.

“Our view has always been that financial inclusion extends well beyond simple access to financial services or having a bank account.

“People need more than just access, they need tools to grow their businesses, and they need banks and financial institutions that are willing to partner with them on their journey and provide them with the tools they need along the way – whether this takes the form of capital business tools, or just the ability to accept payments.

“As mentioned above, many businesses in South Africa and across the continent transact only through cash.

“This means for the most part that people cannot reap the full benefits of their income,” he said

Looking ahead, Brownell said that Yoco’s next immediate undertaking was the launch of a new card machine, the Yoco Khumo (meaning wealth, riches or abundance in Tswana), which offers the fastest connectivity speed ever on a Yoco card machine, as it was connected to the widely accessible 4G network speeds, with unlimited data.

“This is the most affordable, smart card machine in South Africa, launching at R799 and capable of processing Tap, Chip & Pin, Swipe, and digital mobile payments in under 3 seconds.

“Yoco has also created a new version of the Yoco App, so that everything can be done within the same card machine – from payments to viewing transactions, with safety and security in mind from beginning to end.”