Independent businesses remain resilient despite constraints 

Being an entrepreneur isn’t easy: infrastructure issues, rising costs, and political and economic uncertainty create daily challenges. Yet every day, entrepreneurs open their doors, serve their customers, and grow against the odds.

We’ve been privileged to have a front row seat into how these businesses are growing over the past decade. In that time, we’ve learnt survival for most small businesses depends on clearing everyday frictions. 

Yoco has focused on solving the foundational problems holding entrepreneurs back — first by making it easier to get paid, then by unlocking access to fast, flexible capital, and now by helping businesses stay organised with affordable, intuitive POS tools.

The results? Billions of rands in transactions flow through Yoco every year across more than 200,000 businesses we proudly serve.

Yoco’s early growth came from removing foundational friction

One of the first foundational problems any small businesses must overcome is getting paid. For today’s entrepreneurs that includes the ability to accept card and online payments. 

When Yoco started, card acceptance in South Africa was designed for established retailers, and only offered by banks. Getting a terminal was a long arduous process for small businesses. 

The problems went beyond payments. The existing options came with a time consuming onboarding process and the system itself didn’t work for fast-paced businesses that needed to protect their customer experience.

We wanted to take a different approach. We cut the time to getting a machine to within 2 days and removed unnecessary bureaucracy so merchants could focus on everything else that comes with running a small business. That included radically simplifying customer onboarding but still offering real support when it was needed.

Building a system with lower friction meant earlier sales, faster momentum, and a clearer path to growth. Our original cohort of merchants reflects how a focus on what works for customers was crucial to unlock both our growth and theirs. 

Growing alongside our early customers 

Before launching Yoco, we worked closely with 500 merchants who were part of our beta testing programme. They became a critical feedback loop that helped us design an ideal device for local retailers. 

When we officially launched in October 2015, we had 295 merchants who processed at least one payment using our card machines. By the end of the month, they’d processed over R13.2 million in sales. This worked out to an average of R44,852 per active merchant.

> Out of our original 2015 cohort, 137 processed a payment with Yoco in July 2025. Together they processed over R19.4 million in transactions and saw their average per active merchant triple to R141,763.

Our early traction came from businesses operating in the Food and Beverages (notably restaurants and cafés), Retail, and Health, Beauty and Fitness segments. These are sectors with the potential for high-volume transactions, yet they were some of the most underserved by the traditional card terminal ecosystem.

Once we established our connections in those spaces, it didn’t take long for word of mouth to spread and the number of merchants on our platform grew. 

Food and Beverages are still our biggest segment in 2025 

The trust we built with early customers still shapes our business. Today, these segments account for nearly two-thirds of the businesses using Yoco and 70% of the transactions we process. Of these, Food and Beverages remains our biggest overall segment accounting for the largest share of transactions we processed in July 2025. 

Gauteng has overtaken the Western Cape as our biggest province

Initially, we saw our biggest success in the Western Cape, particularly in and around Cape Town. When we launched in October 2015, the large majority, followed by the remainder in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

By the end of 2019, we started reaching new merchants outside of the Western Cape. By this stage, the province accounted for about 37% of our active merchants while Gauteng had more than doubled to approximately 35%. 

As we deepened our reach, we've had this flip and we’re seeing a more even split in how our merchants are distributed in 2025.  As a result, we’ve also seen a 6x increase in transactions processed by our merchants in Gauteng and the Western Cape. 

Our early success invited competition into the payments space but raised the bar for how we support our merchants

Our early success highlighted the opportunities that existed in the payments space and it was only a matter of time before we faced stiffer competition. Which began once banks and fintechs started to prioritise payments in their business strategies. 

This was great for SMEs as it meant wider access and choice. But, it meant Yoco had to evolve beyond processing payments to help our merchants solve the next foundational problem in growing their businesses: liquidity. 

Cash flow is king for SMEs and small business owners needed access to capital on their terms

Paying close attention to our customers’ needs and having the data to back it up has always been the foundation of our product and company strategy.

We had data on our merchants’ sales and rhythms, which helped us recognise that a better credit solution was the next opportunity to help our merchants continue growing.

Owners need to restock before peaks, fix equipment immediately, and cover payroll before settlements clear. Traditional credit just isn’t built for that rhythm or the reality of running a small business in South Africa.

Our response? Yoco Capital. 

Yoco Capital provides fast funding based on a merchant’s sales history. If they qualify for an advance, they get instant approval and access to their cash in 1 business day.

Unlike a traditional line of credit, merchants pay back the advance with a % of every sale through Yoco rather than fixed debit orders. By tying payments to sales, we ensured that repayments matched their pace of business: If business slows down, so do your repayments.

That flexibility matters for our merchants and we’ve seen its popularity increase since its inception. Over the past six months, nearly 14% of eligible businesses used the service. In total, we've helped more than 25,000 businesses access over R3 billion in capital.

These advances have been especially important to our merchants in segments like Food, Drink & Hospitality, who typically experience larger fluctuations in sales around the Festive Season. As a result, they are roughly twice as likely to use it compared to businesses in our other segments. 

Access to capital on their own terms has helped many unlock the next phase of their growth: Managing operational complexity.

POS is the next frontier for unlocking merchants’ growth

As our merchants grow, they add new staff, products, and channels to the business. This is great for unlocking new revenue streams but means time disappears into admin. Bigger businesses also need more complex and regular stock checks, reconciliations, invoices, and coordination across disconnected tools. 

Managing this complexity can quickly overwhelm owners, and mistakes can be costly. Appointing more staff to own these tasks is not possible for most businesses at this stage, and existing software solutions can be too expensive or require owners to spend critical time stitching systems together.

We knew our customers needed a complete, affordable POS system that’s quick to set up, easy to use, and made for businesses operating in South Africa. Today, that’s helping us expand our offering beyond payments as we work with our merchants to take the next step in growing their business.

The strongest uptake has come from the food & beverage sector, particularly notably coffee shops, cafés, bakeries, quick service restaurants, and smaller sit-down venues. Beyond food and drink, we’ve seen boutique retailers and even schools turning to our POS tools to simplify their operations.

> The data is showing the value these tools are bringing to merchants. On average, merchants using Yoco POS grow their revenue up to 500% more than those who only accept simple card payments. 

We’re also seeing benefits play out beyond revenue growth. Owners report saving between 8 and10 hours per week by virtue of streamlining stock management, product setup, and sales reconciliation. Those hours go straight back into serving customers and growing their businesses.

Yoco’s growth points to where the ecosystem is heading

Our growth is driven by helping our merchants tackle the foundational problems that are critical to growing their businesses: get paid, get capital, and get organised. As we’ve grown, we’ve seen more competitors enter the market demonstrating the potential of local SMEs and what’s possible when solutions focus on underserved sectors over maintaining the status quo.