If you’ve ever bought a product or paid for a service from a small vendor or business, you may have encountered the small portable card machines that connect to the merchant’s phone. Those are made by Yoco, a South African company that offers a full payment solution to SMEs in SA, and with about $83 million in hand, it plans to expand beyond our borders.
It secured $83 million (around R1.2 billion) in its Series C funding. While it initially offered physical card facilities, Yoco also launched its digital payment portal recently, making its offering pretty comprehensive. The company’s certain the large demand for payment solutions is thanks to an increase in small businesses on the continent.
Considering card and mobile penetration rate is growing, small businesses will miss out if they don’t offer card facilities. We’re moving toward an increasingly cashless society — exasperated by the current pandemic and hygienic practices.
Show us the Yoco
According to a press release, “This is the largest single investment raised by a small business-focused payments platform in the Middle East and Africa and the largest ever raised by a payments company in South Africa.”
In total, Yoco has raised $107 million over its lifespan. The company plans to increase its reach by focusing on streamlining the payment ecosystem for small businesses. Right now, it’s already offering both online and offline payment methods — both of which can easily be linked to the same account. Even more, it’s planning to expand its operations outside of South Africa.
The most recent (ginormous, if we might say) investment comes from a group of investors including Dragoneer Investment Group — and this is the group’s first endeavour dropping its money in the African market. Otherwise, the list contains some existing Yoco investors like Partech, Velocity Capital Fintech Ventures, Orange Ventures, Quona Capital, FMO and Futuregrowth.
Yoco currently serves 150,000 small businesses in the country and processes more than $1 billion in card payments per year.