Yoco Technologies secured a $100 million (R1.6 billion) credit facility from Victory Park Capital Advisors to help the South African digital-commerce company, backed by private equity giant TPG, support its network of merchants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The firm that provides card terminals to small businesses will use the money for finance and cash advances to its customers, Chief Executive Officer Carsten H\u00f6ltkemeyer said in an interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The transaction with Victory Park, which manages about $3.6 billion in assets and has invested more than $12 billion across 260 investments since 2007, marks Yoco\u2019s first foray into the debt market. It has disbursed R6.5 billion to merchants through partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe deal will, for the first time, give Yoco direct control over the financing needs for our merchants at scale and in-house,\u201d H\u00f6ltkemeyer said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAdvances will range from 2,000 rand to R1.5 million, with merchants using the money to fund things like hiring more staff, buying stock, equipment upgrades or opening new branches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The deal with Chicago-based Victory Park signals that global investors still have an appetite for big bets on Africa\u2019s rapidly scaling fintech economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yoco previously raised more than $150 million in equity from large global backers, including TPG and Dragoneer Investment Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In recent years, private-debt facilities have become more important sources of funding for Africa\u2019s increasingly maturing technology companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Small businesses in Africa\u2019s biggest economy face a funding gap of about R350 billion according to the Access to Finance report produced by aggregator Finfind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The companies struggle to secure financing from traditional banks, and providing access to working capital at scale will stimulate growth in the sector, said H\u00f6ltkemeyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yoco began operating in 2015 and has expanded its offering from selling affordable point-of-sale devices to providing a payments platform that now runs on an artificial intelligence operating system, said H\u00f6ltkemeyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Merchants who use the payment devices have access to the Yoco Capital service, and can be pre-approved for advances based on their live sales data, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Funding to a merchant\u2019s account is instantaneous, with repayments done through automatic deductions from businesses\u2019 daily sales, said H\u00f6ltkemeyer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Cape Town-based startup now processes payments to 200,000 merchants by 30 million consumers a year, he said. To date, Yoco has processed more than $15 billion in payments, said H\u00f6ltkemeyer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yoco Technologies has secured an approximate R1.6 billion credit facility, marking the fintech giant’s first entry into the debt market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":729069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"failed","_sma_x_autopost_error":"Instagram publishing failed: Instagram returned HTTP 400: Media ID is not available","_sma_x_post_id":"2119733243226304793","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2266778174142581","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[547,27069,12503],"class_list":["post-883352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-tpg-capital","tag-victory-park-capital-advisors","tag-yoco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=883352"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":883360,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/883352\/revisions\/883360"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=883352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=883352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=883352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}