When Carl Wazen, Katlego Maphai, Lungisa Matshoba and Bradley Wattrus decided to start Yoco together around 2013, they did not have a polished business plan or a grand vision for building a payments company. They only had a problem they could not ignore.
“We were all at this stage of our lives where we wanted to do something that had more meaning,” Wazen, Yoco’s chief business officer and co-founder, recalled.
Wazen and Maphai met while working at the telecommunications consulting firm Delta Partners. Maphai and Matshoba had known each other since childhood and university, while Wattrus had worked with Maphai at Rocket Internet, a global venture-building company, in Nigeria.
South Africa was moving towards card payments. Between 2010 and 2014, card-payment transactions almost doubled, from 1.02 billion to 1.96 billion, while cards in circulation rose from 58 million to 90 million. But small businesses were being left behind. For many, accepting cards meant navigating banks, paperwork, fees, and hardware designed for larger companies.
Originally published by TechCabal.