South African startup Yoco, a financial platform for small business, has launched a suite of online payment solutions for merchants to sustain their cash flow during and beyond the COVID-19 lockdown.
Yoco, which secured US$16 million Series B funding in 2018 and has been rolling out a number of new products, including a cash advance service.
In response to the national lockdown imposed by the government to limit the spread of the coronavirus, Yoco has developed three new payment solutions for its customers – Payment Page, Gift Vouchers, and Payment Request. All three are purpose-built for small businesses to do business online in different ways, simply and securely.
The Yoco Online Payment suite enables merchants to securely accept online payments, as well as easily track and reconcile all invoices and payments whether in-person or online. Each solution is designed with specific use cases in mind.
Until now, Yoco has been known for in-person payments, so enabling online payments marks a step-change for the company and its customers.
“Yoco’s mission has always centred around helping small businesses thrive and supporting them is more important now than ever before. The national lockdown has had a severe impact on our merchants. Through our platform and the results of a recent merchant survey, we have seen up to a 90% decrease in in-person transactions since the lockdown began. We knew that the best way to support our merchants was to develop products that would enable them to do business online and keep money coming in through this period,” said Katlego Maphai, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Yoco.
