Yoco is one of the hottest companies in African fintech, having recently raised R230 million (US$16 million) to fuel its effort to grow its network of small businesses using its point of sale technology.
Yoco’s Co-founder and CEO, Katlego Maphai, will share the Yoco story, as well as thoughts on building a successful BigFive business in Africa today, at the BigFive Summit, May 13-14 in Cape Town.
Yoco solves a basic problem facing African many small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs) — finding affordable and portable technology for processing credit card payments. In fact, 75% of Yoco customers are accepting credit card payments for the first time.
Yoco has moved quickly since launching its product in 2015, reaching nearly 30,000 merchants across South Africa, handling gross payment volume of US$280 million annually. The company is adding about 1,500 new accounts per month. Yoco is South Africa’s largest and fastest growing independent card processor.
While Yoco’s ambition is to get much bigger, in a recent interview, Maphai made it clear that having the discipline to say no to opportunities is critical to the company’s continued success.
“As we grow, new opportunities will appear. It’s crucial that we maintain the disciplined pursuit of less, over the undisciplined pursuit of more,” Maphai said.
Yoco’s basic kit for SMMEs costs R1799, or around US$125. The key to Yoco’s value proposition goes beyond card payment processes. Yoco also collects data that SMMEs can use to managing their businesses more effectively, including top-selling products, peak sales periods, inventory flows. Businesses can use this data to schedule staff more efficiently, for example, manage inventories more effectively, have better insights into which products to promote, and so on.
The BigFive Summit is a great opportunity to learn from and network with leading BigFive entrepreneurs like Maphai and others. The BigFive building blocks of the local digital ecosystem are location, mobile, payments, search and social. We are building the summit agenda with these components in mind. Stay tuned for more speaker announcement and an updated agenda after the new year.
You can learn more about the BigFive Summit here and register for the conference here. Early bird rates expire on January 31.