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Yoco Technologies (Pty) Ltd
Yoco sells card readers and payment software that let small businesses in South Africa accept payments and manage their money.
Yoco is a payments company built for small businesses in South Africa. A restaurant owner, a hairdresser, or a market stall trader signs up, gets a small card reader, and can start accepting tap-to-pay and online payments within minutes — without a bank branch visit or a long contract. The company has roughly 350,000 merchants on its platform, making it one of the largest payment providers for small traders in the country. It is headquartered in Cape Town, where its product and engineering teams are based.
The way it makes money is simple: it takes a small cut of every payment it processes. A merchant swipes a card for 200 rand, and Yoco keeps a slice of that. It sells the card readers too, but the real business is the steady stream of fees from transactions. That model works because small merchants used to have a painful time getting approved for card machines — banks wanted paperwork, credit checks and fixed contracts. Yoco instead made signup self-serve and mobile-first, and it got the kits out with a slick app and a cheap reader. It also widened its offering over the years: business cash advances, invoice tools, and a full point-of-sale app for shops and restaurants. The obvious competition is the banks and traditional payment processors, plus newer rivals selling card readers. Yoco's edge comes from focusing entirely on small merchants — a group the big banks often treated as an afterthought — and from building the software layer around payments rather than just the hardware. The business hinges on merchant loyalty and volume, which makes it stickier than a pure reader seller, but it also means Yoco is exposed to how well South Africa's small businesses are doing and to the price war on transaction fees.
Yoco became a "unicorn" in 2021 when it raised money that valued it above $1 billion, one of the few African fintechs to get there. It has since expanded beyond card payments into broader business tools, and it remains private, backed by venture investors. The question for the business is whether it can keep growing by serving small merchants who need more help than just a card reader — lending, bookkeeping, and cash flow — without turning into a bank with all its costs.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026