Article
Payment method
The more payment methods your business accepts, the more sales you can make! Join Yoco to accept card payments in person and online.
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It's 2021. You need more payment methods than cash.
Gone are the days when your only option of paying for something involved opening up ye-olde physical wallet to dig for a crumpled R2 note. (Yes those were a thing).
And if you happened to forget your wallet at home, you were in a proper pickle. No more!
Today, there’s a payment method to suit everyone, whether it’s cash (some people can’t let it go), cards, a mobile payment method like Apple Pay, QR codes, or online payments.
The most common payment methods in SA
Cash: the way of the past
It's still around, but it's used less and less every day as people move towards safer, cleaner ways to exchange money.
Card: the way of the present
Over 80% of Yoco merchants accept card payments for the first time when they join our platform. The revelation has begun!
Online: the way of the future
A global pandemic accelerated the move towards online payments – and more businesses are adopting them every day.
A (brief) history of payment methods
Back in the day when apples weren’t synonymous with a certain brand that revolutionised mobile payments, humans relied on bartering to buy the goods or services they needed.
The problem with bartering though was that you had to find someone willing to trade. If Cyril didn’t want to swap his cow for a flint, you needed to find someone who would.
As far as payment methods go, bartering couldn't last...
Rare and valued natural objects like cowrie shells, mother-of-pearl, copper, amber, silver, gold and even pieces of meteorites were used as payment methods by our ancestors.
But it was only in 600BC that the world’s first known form of formal currency, in form of the Mesopotamian shekel – stamped gold and silver coins – were circulated.
Coins are out, paper money is in.
Fast forward a couple of thousand years (and a couple of other significant monetary developments) and paper money, in the form of handwritten notes, was introduced in South Africa in 1782.
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The (accidental) birth of the credit card
Two decades and a couple of thousand kilometres across the Atlantic later, a gentleman by the name of Frank McNamara unwittingly paved the way for the first iteration of the credit card, in the form of a handwritten IOU when he made the now historic mistake of forgetting his wallet at home after eating at his favourite restaurant.
Shortly after, paper was replaced by plastic, and the world’s first card machines were born in the 70s.
The rest, as they say, is history
A short hop, skip, and jump through time later and here we are: with a plethora of payment methods at our disposal. And when it comes to doing business, the more payment methods you can offer your customers, the better.
Yoco’s got you covered: from our next-gen Go and Khumo card machines, to our online payment solutions including our payment Gateway, Link, and Vouchers, we’re all about equipping you with the payment methods that help your business grow.