It began with a pyramid.

Eleven years ago, our four founders sketched out a diagram of a pyramid on a scrap piece of paper, when they were figuring out what Yoco was actually for. What we stood for. Where we were going.

It sat in the background of the business for over a decade. Referenced in meetings and strategy sessions as a way to understand what Yoco is really building toward.

On 17 June 2026, co-founder Lungisa Matshoba walked onto a stage at Yoco Next and behind him on the screen, was the original pyramid.

In that moment, the pyramid, passed from the founders to a room full of journalists, merchants, and Yoco people, was the signal that something had shifted.

This is the story.

A building with the right history

The venue choice was not an accident.

Victoria Yards has been on this site since 1913. It opened as a working laundry that kept Johannesburg running. Then it became a hub for mechanics and panel beaters. Now it is home to makers, artisans, and independent traders.

The building has changed shape with whoever needed it, much like what we’ve done. As we ourselves have grown and evolved, so too have the businesses we’ve built for.

When we chose Victoria Yards for Yoco Next, we made a statement that did not need to be explained. The place where independent businesses find their footing felt like the only honest setting for what was about to happen.

The Craft Behind the Graft

Months before the first guest arrived, the work was already deep.

Product and engineering teams were building across more than twenty features simultaneously, each one a complete project in its own right, all landing on the same day. Marketing, events, account management, field sales, customer support, legal, finance: every team had a role, and every role connected to the same end point.

What made it work was not just the effort. It was the shared understanding of what the effort was for. Teams iterated, pushed back, got it wrong, and got it right; always with the same question in mind: does this actually help the person behind the counter?

None of that process was visible on the day. Which meant it had all been done right.

That chaos was the point. A brand held by many is a brand that holds.

Delivering the Message

The speakers at Yoco Next were not external names brought in to fill a programme. They were the Yoco people who each had a hand in building the things they were presenting.

Dean Broadley, Director of Design

Dean presented two segments on the day. In the first, he announced Yoco Connect, Yoco Developer Hub, and Yoco’s MCP server. All live and operational. In the second, he walked the room through what he helped build for health and beauty: appointment scheduling, customer profiles, service menus, smart receipts, and a system that means the double booking simply cannot happen. 

Then he welcomed Kay Williams onto the stage. Kay founded Kreme Beauty Lounge in 2018 as a side hustle while working in the pharmaceutical industry, funded ten of her eleven locations through Yoco Capital, and now runs a business where 99% of transactions are card-only. Their conversation covered what it means to manage eleven locations from one system, how fast access to capital changed the pace of her growth, and what a business looks like when the relationship with every client lives in the platform rather than in one stylist's memory.

Shabnam Osman, Product Director

Eight years at Yoco. Shabnam has watched independent restaurants operate on tools that were not built for them for most of her career here. On 17 June she presented a full food and beverage suite: Prep Stations, Table Management, Tableside Ordering, Modifiers, Locations, and Staff Permissions. Every launch she presented was the answer to a specific problem Yoco had seen first-hand. 

Table management meant the floor lived in the system, not in one person's head. Tableside ordering meant orders went straight to the kitchen the moment they were placed. Staff permissions meant the owner had full visibility across every shift. Meaningful product updates that will truly make a difference in this competitive market.

Alfi Oloo, Product Designer

Alfi spent three months building Yoco Savings before stepping onto a stage for the first time to talk about it. The question Alfi had been sitting with was how to build something that worked around how independent business cash actually moves. Not in a predictable monthly salary, but in waves, peaks, and quiet months. 

Yoco Savings sets money aside automatically with each sale, into named pockets with their own targets: VAT, a new piece of equipment, the inevitable rainy day. In the 21 days before the event, nearly 4,000 businesses had already created an active pocket, and collectively invested more than R3.4 million.

Alongside Savings, co-founder Carl Wazen and Alfi introduced Yoco Loyalty, South Africa's simplest broad-based, card-linked loyalty system built specifically for independent businesses. The loyalty behaviour was already there in our data, it just hadn't been rewarded until now. An incredibly satisfying product to launch, as it has been one of our most requested.

Dean Bellingan, Product Lead

Dean presented the retail segment, launching our Retail Suite, a barcode scanner, Tap to Pay on iPhone, Smart Receipts, Stock Updates, and the new Khumo 2. He built the story around a single blue hat: from a first sale on a phone in a market, to a permanent store set up in an afternoon, to a multi-location business with full visibility across every till. 

Then he invited Kelly Gibberd, co-founder of Me&B, a womenswear brand that manufactures locally and employs over 50 staff, onto the stage. Their conversation on stage was pure unscripted charm, and the kind of real talk that happens when two people both understand what it costs to run a business in South Africa right now.

Thalentha Ngobeni, Founder in Residence

Thalentha came to the Yoco Next stage as one of the founders of Dyner.ai and now a Founder in Residence, to demonstrate the power of bringing this technology to Yoco’s platform. He has built AI tools specifically for independent restaurants, and that proximity shows.

Alongside Yoco co-founder Lungisa, he closed the event with the most forward-looking segment of the day: demonstrating how Yoco AI will have the capabilities to watch your business, spot what you would have missed, and tell you what to do next.

What the Founders Said

The founders have been building toward this moment for eleven years. On stage, each of them said something different. Together, they told a single story.

Bradley Wattrus opened with the reality Yoco lives closest to: the data is in our own systems. 

• 77% of merchants said global conflict is affecting their business.

• 46% feel less confident than at the start of the year.

• 51% have seen customers spending less. 

For the teams who work with merchants every day, none of those numbers are a surprise. They are the reason the work matters, perhaps now more than ever.

Lungisa Matshoba traced how Yoco built toward this point. Not from a roadmap, but from proximity. The Friday lunch rush. The salon owner cross-referencing WhatsApp threads at 7:50 on a Monday morning. The retailer reconciling three spreadsheets on a Sunday night. He held up the original pyramid sketch from eleven years ago and showed the room that the mission had not drifted. 

Every product, every team, every iteration had been in service of the same belief.

Carl Wazen landed it:

For anyone at Yoco who has been part of building that vision, that line was not just for the room. It was for all of us.

A new chapter, a new leader

Part of what made Yoco Next different from any previous event was the introduction of Carsten Holtkemeyer as Yoco CEO.

The founders brought him to the stage not as a handover, but as an addition. Our future is ambitious, and we need the right leader to take us there.

This is what our values look like in practice

Our belief has always been that technology, delivered with the right care and principles, can move independent businesses from survival to growth.

On 17 June, it showed up everywhere.

It showed up in the many product updates introduced, such as the rate reduction: over R250 million a year back into the pockets of Yoco merchants, because we’ve seen the pressure you’ve been under and we’re responding with more than words.

It showed up in the choice of merchants on stage. The ones building something real. Manufacturing locally, employing their local community, pushing back against globalisation and international retail giants to provide something real, beautiful, and delivered with care.

It showed up in the team. Hundreds of people from product, engineering, marketing, account management, events, finance, legal, customer support, all moving toward the same thing on the same day. 

Because we knew it’s what our merchants needed to grow beyond.

The Next Chapter

Yoco Next was the point where eleven years of proximity, of being in the room, of building from real problems rather than product briefs, became visible all at once.

That is what made the room feel different.

The weight behind the announcements was palpable, it wasn’t merely a laundry list of releases. For everyone at Yoco who built something that was on that stage, or behind it, or in the weeks leading up to it, this is what it was for.

Let’s get independent businesses back to the reason they started.

So they can stop just running their businesses, and get back to building it.

This is the movement.

Let’s grow.

In Pictures

What Launched at Yoco Next: Unfair Advantage

• An AI co-worker that watches your business and tells you what to do next

• An integration hub that connects all the tools you already use

• Open infrastructure for any developer to build on top of Yoco

• Savings pockets that set money aside automatically as you trade

• Card-linked loyalty with no extra app required

• Our biggest ever financial investment in South Africa's independent businesses

For the full product release breakdown, visit the release page.

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