Announced on November 9, the facility will fund Yoco Capital, its embedded finance arm, and give the company greater control over financing offered to merchants using its payments platform.

Yoco serves more than 200,000 businesses and plans to extend funding to more merchants across retail, hospitality, and services.

The agreement brings a larger share of its financing operations in-house, allowing Yoco to manage pricing and credit risk directly while continuing to work with external funding providers where appropriate.

The company has provided merchant funding through specialist small business credit partners since 2018.

It says these partnerships have delivered more than approximately $397 million in working capital to over 40,000 merchants.

Individual advances range from about $122 to $91,600, based on the November 9 exchange rate. Businesses use the funding to purchase inventory, hire employees, upgrade equipment, and open additional branches.

Yoco Capital assesses eligibility using merchants’ sales data from in-person and online payments.

Qualifying businesses receive preapproved offers through the Yoco app without having to provide collateral. Repayments are collected automatically from daily sales, linking collections to trading activity rather than a fixed monthly installment.

“Financing was the one layer we didn’t fully control. This facility changes that,” said Carsten Holtkemeyer, Yoco’s chief executive officer.

The financing addresses a persistent barrier to small business growth in South Africa: lenders often lack sufficient information to assess the businesses seeking capital.

The OECD’s Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs 2026 report identifies limited credit records, informal operations, and weak financial documentation as obstacles to funding. It notes that lenders frequently rely on an owner’s personal credit profile when business-level information is unavailable.

Yoco’s transaction data provides a basis for assessing how merchants actually trade, connecting payment processing with access to working capital.

For businesses already using its platform, that approach reduces the application burden and supports funding decisions based on recorded sales. It also makes merchant financing a more integrated part of Yoco’s existing payments and business software offering.

The facility connects international private credit with the operating needs of South African businesses through an established merchant network.

Its practical significance will depend on how widely Yoco extends access and the terms merchants receive, particularly where businesses need capital to stock shelves, maintain operations, or finance expansion.