Cape Town – South African fintech start-up Yoco, which on Wednesday announced that it had successfully concluded a foreign funding round, has so far been a lot more expansive than disruptive, with around 70 percent of its customers not having previously used a card payment service at all. Yoco’s integrated card payment and point-of-sale system enables small businesses and entrepreneurs to securely accept card payments wherever they are. Pay-per-use pricing with no monthly fees make it an obvious choice for small business owners who have not been able to accept plastic before.
The funding, an undisclosed sum from US-based Quona Capital and Velocity Capital of the Netherlands, has been earmarked to expand the footprint and services offered by the fast-growing fintech company that currently processes more than R1 billion in transactions per year.
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The South African market of small and medium-sized businesses, Mom and Pop stores and entrepreneurs – many of them not accepting any form of plastic payment at all – is estimated to be around a million potential customers; Yoco currently serves 6500 customers.
Yoco plans to use the funds raised to expand their current customer base, add on additional services to their offering and to prepare for expansion into other markets.