Mastercard – When small businesses grow, South Africa grows
Every morning, across South Africa’s townships and communities, small businesses open their doors.
A spaza shop owner stocks her shelves to serve customers. A township designer packs an order received online. A salon owner welcomes a new hairdresser.
These businesses are helping to build an economy that keeps money moving locally.
Individually, these businesses may be small, but collectively they represent one of South Africa’s most important engines of economic participation and opportunity.
The evidence sits in the jobs they create, the communities they serve and in the income they earn, spend and invest close to home.
Yet many of these businesses continue to face an uphill battle.
Not because they lack ambition or determination, but because the odds remain stacked against them.
The South African Government reports that small businesses are a major force in the country’s economy, accounting for 91% of formal businesses, generating around 60% of employment and contributing up to 34% of GDP.
The township economy is valued at over R900 billion a year, while accounting for nearly 19.5% of total employment.
These numbers paint a clear picture: to build inclusive economic growth, we cannot afford to look past SMEs and businesses operating within townships and other communities.
The challenge is not about getting more people to start businesses, it is more about helping existing SMEs to move from survival to sustainability, and from sustainability to growth.
What these entrepreneurs need is access to finance, reliable infrastructure, simpler regulations and inroads into larger markets.
As consumers move more of their spending online, digital capability is joining that list, because it is what allows a business to reach past the customers who walk by the door.
The Mastercard SME Confidence Index found that South African SMEs have a strong digital foundation and are commercially mature, with many already demonstrating sturdy adoption of digital payments.
These entrepreneurs are not simply adopting technology for technology’s sake. They are looking for practical tools that can help them run better businesses.
More than half of the SMEs surveyed (55%) identified simple and seamless payment experiences as an important opportunity for growth, followed by safe and cyber-secure payment processing (51%).
This marks an important shift in how we think about the growth of SMEs. Digital tools have now become essential to how businesses reach customers, generate sales and build something that lasts.
An entrepreneur can market through social media, sell through digital platforms, accept digital payments and manage day-to-day operations using technology, all from the community where they live and work.
Mastercard’s Online Retail in South Africa 2026 reinforces this. It projects that South Africans will spend around R159 billion online in 2026, with online retail accounting for an average 10% of national retail turnover.
Ten years ago, online retail had just reached 1% of total retail turnover. The study also highlights how digital commerce is becoming part of everyday trade, with businesses using online platforms, marketplaces and digital tools to expand their operations, improve efficiency, and reach more consumers.
“Collaboration is what turns a digital opportunity into real growth for a small business. By working with fintechs, banks and government, Mastercard is helping make digital payments, technology and skills more accessible to SMEs, giving them both the tools they need to scale and access to broader markets. A business today is no longer limited to the street where it begins. With the right partnerships and tools, it has the capability to scale anywhere,” said Gabriel Swanepoel, division president for Africa at Mastercard.
South Africa does not lack entrepreneurial ambition. The work is building the conditions that allow that ambition to translate into sustainable businesses.
It is about helping create an economy where a small business is not defined by the size of its balance sheet, its location or the neighbourhood in which it started. It is defined by its potential.
That means widening market access, putting digital tools within easier reach and strengthening the collaborations that connect small businesses to the opportunities around them.
From township spaza shops to digitally enabled businesses, SMEs have the potential to expand beyond their immediate markets, create jobs and contribute meaningfully to the economy.
The task now is to ensure they have the tools, connections and opportunities to turn that potential into sustainable growth.
This work is part of Mastercard’s global commitment to connect and protect 500 million people and small businesses on their path to financial health.
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