<\/p>\n
A well-reported stat in SA is that 70-80% of small businesses fail within 10 years.<\/p>\n
They fail for a host of reasons, most usually because they lack admin skills or don\u2019t have the funds to survive cash flow droughts.<\/p>\n
Electronic payments company Yoco has seen this struggle from the inside and has come up with a compelling solution: apart from slashing its fees, it offers merchants more than 20 tools designed to help their businesses thrive.<\/p>\n
They include:<\/p>\n
Yoco AI<\/strong>: A read-write AI assistant that answers plain-language questions from merchants\u2019 data and takes action on your business. It also flags unusual patterns for an owner early and recommends actions.<\/p>\n Yoco Loyalty<\/strong>: Automatic rewards for customers on every card tap (no app or punch card required).<\/p>\n Industry Modes<\/strong>: Software shaped to help you run your business, whether you are in food and beverages, health and beauty, retail, and more.<\/p>\n Yoco Savings<\/strong>: Automatic savings goals across multiple pockets, paying interest at 4% a year, with no lock-in periods and instant withdrawal. This is also great for set-asides for items such as a new coffee machine, and takes just 30 seconds to set up.<\/p>\n Yoco Connect<\/strong>: A third-party app marketplace and developer hub.<\/p>\n Lower fees:<\/strong> Up to 40% reduction in transaction fees put back into merchants\u2019 pockets.<\/p>\n Shabnam Osman, product director at Yoco, says the company already works with more than 50\u00a0000 food businesses in SA, backed by a developer hub that gives it the most open payments infrastructure in the country and allows integration with third-party software such as cloud-based accounting package Xero.<\/p>\n \u201cIt takes just one day to receive a Yoco electronic payments device, and five minutes to connect to the merchant\u2019s bank account. Speed breaks down when systems don\u2019t talk to each other. Checkouts running on Yoco move 50% faster than normal, and that makes a huge difference to business efficiency,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n What clients say<\/strong><\/p>\n Fashion designer and entrepreneur Kelly-Grace Gibberd, who co-founded Me&B with her mother Betina Swart, is a long-standing Yoco client who has been able to grow her business through e-commerce and physical branches such as at 44 Stanley in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n The business launched in 2018 and now employs 55 staff and supports 10 factories in the Cape Town area.<\/p>\n \u201cMy advice to those who want to launch their own business is start, even if you\u2019re not ready,\u201d Gibberd says.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ll learn quickly, but make sure that you are passionate about it because that will carry you over the line.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Yoco client sharing her growth story is Kay Williams, founder of Kreme Beauty Lounge. The business was also launched in 2018 and today has 11 outlets that cater to the walk-in trade.<\/p>\n \u201cWe set out to make beauty affordable to all South African women,\u201d Williams says.<\/p>\n \u201cI started it as a side hustle when I was still working in the pharmaceutical industry, but then I had to do it full time.\u201d<\/p>\n What made her growth story possible was Yoco Capital, a division within Yoco that provides capital to businesses in need.<\/p>\n The borrowed money is repaid from a percentage of each new sale. It\u2019s made a huge difference to businesses like Kreme Beauty Lounge, allowing the company to grow without having to do so through the slow, tedious grind of applying for bank funding.<\/p>\n Dean Bradley, design director at Yoco, says Health & Beauty is a R1.1 trillion annual market in SA that is woefully underserved by the banks and software providers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve built something to manage this type of business, where revenue is known in advance, appointments are logged as they are made, there are no double-bookings, and you know what every client is spending.<\/p>\n \u201cUsing this data you can build powerful loyalty programmes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n These are the kinds of tools that independent businesses had to develop themselves, or rely on paper-based systems. Gaining real-time insights into your business, rather than taking a rear-view look once a month, can mean the difference between business success or failure.<\/p>\n All this comes on top of the R250 million in fee savings that Yoco expects to return to merchants over the next year.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to give merchants an unfair advantage by leveraging advancements in AI, software, and financial technology and making them available to independent businesses through a single, integrated platform that is simple and affordable,\u201d says Carsten H\u00f6ltkemeyer, newly appointed CEO at Yoco.<\/p>\n While H\u00f6ltkemeyer steps into the role of CEO, the founders remain deeply involved in the business. Carl Wazen continues as chief business officer. Katlego Maphai has stepped back as CEO but remains engaged in strategy as a co-founder.<\/p>\n Bradley Wattrus, co-founder and chief financial officer, and Lungisa Matshoba, also co-founder and chief product officer, continue to shape the future direction of the company.<\/p>\n Today, the company has more than 200\u00a0000 merchants and last year processed 359 million transactions. Not bad from its humble beginnings: in 2017 it had 10\u00a0000 merchants and processed 4.4 million transactions.<\/p>\n Judging by the latest moves to support independent businesses with a suite of tools never before available to the market, the best is yet to come.<\/p>\n Brought to you by\u00a0<\/em>Yoco<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n Moneyweb does not endorse any product or service being advertised in sponsored articles on our platform.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Giving #independent #businesses #unfair #advantage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A well-reported stat in SA is that 70-80% of small businesses fail within 10 years. They fail for a host of reasons, most usually because they lack admin skills or… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[423,1461,3115,6894,5513],"class_list":["post-11266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-advantage","tag-businesses","tag-giving","tag-independent","tag-unfair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n