POS payments provider Yoco has collected $16m in its Series B round of funding led by Partech.
Other participation to the round came from Orange Digital Ventures, FMO (The Dutch Development Bank) and existing Series A investors Quona Capital and Velocity Capital. This investment round brings the company’s total funding to $23m.
Yoco is a POS and card reader solution developer for small businesses in South Africa. Its offerings include point of sale software, business intelligence, accounting integrations, and working capital financing.
Since the company’s first platform launched in 2015, a card reader which connects to merchant’s tablets and smartphones, it has built a customer base of 27,000 South African small businesses. Yoco is adding more than 1,500 new merchants each month.
This capital will be used to grow its network of small business merchants, further its product development, scale operations and hire more talent.
Yoco co-founder and CEO Katlego Maphai said, “Small businesses, fundamental to sustainable economic growth, are generally underserved in our part of the world due to their size. Running a business is hard enough, we believe accepting money shouldn’t be.
“We built Yoco on the key pillars of access and trust. Transforming the long and prohibitive process of applying for a card machine into a simple consumer-like product purchase that can happen online or at the store in minutes.”
As part of the transaction, Partech general partner Cyril Collon will join the company’s board.
Earlier in the year, FinTech Global reported Partech had passed the halfway mark for its Africa-focused investment vehicle. The fund, which is targeting €100m, will focus on making early-stage growth investments in a range of technology startups across Africa that aim to address large emerging markets, including FinTech, InsurTech, commerce, EdTech and digital services.
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