Yoco

Yoco uses transaction data captured through its own point-of-sale terminals to assess a merchant's cash flow and creditworthiness. This allows it to extend working-capital advances that traditional South African banks typically cannot underwrite for micro and small enterprises. The model turns payment processing into a proprietary credit-assessment engine.

Yoco is a fintech platform that bundles payment acceptance, point-of-sale software, and business funding into a single account. It is not a licensed deposit-taking bank, but it does provide credit through a merchant cash-advance mechanism funded on its own balance sheet or through credit partners. Its regulatory status as a non-bank lender in South Africa shapes its cost of capital and product terms.

Merchants can use Yoco's proprietary terminals — the countertop Yoco Counter and the mobile Yoco Khumo 2 — or enable Tap to Pay on iPhone to accept contactless payments without additional hardware. The Counter system integrates payment processing with an Android-based point-of-sale interface for sales tracking and reporting. The hardware suite is designed for businesses ranging from market stalls to sit-down restaurants.

Yoco markets its platform across food and beverage, retail, health and beauty, and professional services. Its product pages explicitly name restaurants, salons, and service businesses as core verticals, and merchant testimonials on the site reference smoothie bars, coffee shops, and craft stores. The firm does not publicly exclude any legal industry.

Yoco competes against incumbent bank-owned acquiring services from Standard Bank, Absa, and First National Bank, as well as fellow fintechs like iKhokha and TymePOS. The competitive edge Yoco asserts is an all-in-one hardware-plus-software-plus-funding value proposition that legacy acquirers do not offer to micro-merchants.