Mastercard has teamed up with Yoco, a smart technology payments company, to provide 15,000 mobile point of sale (mPOS) devices to South African (SA) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by the end of the year.

The business owners using the service will connect their Android/iOS devices to a Yoco card reader to accept payments.

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The hardware is paired with an mPOS application and business intelligence portal to give SMEs real-time access to sales insights and analytics to boost their revenue through informed decision-making.

“Small and medium-sized merchants that have never accepted card payments are turning to mPOS solutions to expand their customer base and increase sales,” Mastercard said in a statement.

Yoco’s pay-per-use transaction pricing model with no fixed monthly fees benefits smaller merchants, compared to more costly traditional card terminals.

Yoco CEO Katlego Maphai said: “Small and medium businesses employ over 60% of the labour force in South Africa, yet they lack the basic tools necessary to accept electronic payments and run their businesses effectively.

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“Through this partnership, we will empower even more small businesses that previously did not accept card payments, while growing the market and make a contribution to our economy.”

Mastercard Southern Africa division president Mark Elliott added: “While the number of South Africans with access to formal banking products has grown substantially over the last few years, the number of card acceptance locations – especially at small businesses – has not grown in parallel.

“Solutions like Yoco enable these small and medium businesses to respond to their customers’ increasing desire to pay for goods and services with payment cards rather than cash, which is higher risk, without making large upfront investments in infrastructure or facing high transaction costs.”

Yoco launched its mobile card acceptance offering in 2015. Since then it has grown its base to over 14,500 merchants and is now adding over 1,200 new merchants every month.