South African fintech firm Yoco is set to introduce a new artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant, Yoco AI, as part of a wider strategy to ease administrative workloads for small businesses, enhance decision-making and support growth.
The company teased the upcoming offering at its Unfair Advantage annual event this week, positioning AI as the next step in its evolution from a payments provider into a broader business management platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The new offering will officially go live in the third quarter of 2026.
Yoco’s development of Yoco AI has been accelerated by its recent acquisition of the AI-native operating system Dyner.ai. The acquisition gave Yoco access to deeper machine-learning capabilities and an underlying architecture designed to process and interpret business data in real-time.
The launch comes as Yoco continues to expand its footprint across SA’s payments and point-of-sale market, while increasing its focus on integrated business tools, merchant funding and operational support for entrepreneurs.
During an interview on the side-lines of the event, Dean Braude, director of design at Yoco, said the company now serves more than 200 000 merchants nationwide and is increasingly focused on building products that help business owners spend less time on administration and more time running their businesses.
The development of Yoco AI stems from a growing recognition that small business owners are overwhelmed by data but often lack the time or expertise to extract meaningful insights from it, he noted.
Braude explained that traditional software still requires users to navigate dashboards, reports and transactions to understand what is happening in their businesses.
“Rather than requiring merchants to actively search for information, Yoco AI is being designed to proactively analyse business data and surface recommendations automatically.
“It can proactively look at all that stuff. You wake up in the morning and it might say: ‘I've looked at all the sales from yesterday and these are the things I found.' Instead of you going to find the information, it brings it to you.”
Braude pointed out that the AI assistant will initially be integrated into the Yoco app and will have access to data generated through the company's ecosystem, including payments, sales activity, products and merchant funding information.
This will allow it to identify trends, detect anomalies and provide business insights without requiring merchants to manually analyse reports.
Yoco-branded card machines and the Yoco app are designed to work together within Yoco’s system, with all data being stored in the cloud.
The AI system is also expected to identify unusual activity, flag missing product information and assist with catalogue management, Braude continues.
For example, if sales are recorded against products that do not exist in a merchant's catalogue, the system could automatically identify the discrepancy and recommend corrective action.
“It's a lot about removing the admin and the overhead, pulling the insights proactively and then taking action on the things that go on in your business. Merchants often only know they have a problem once they've hit the wall of the problem. With AI, you can see around the corner.”
Moving beyond payments
Yoco provides card payment solutions and point-of-sale systems for SMEs. The fintech firm enables merchants to accept card and digital payments through Yoco card machines and its mobile app.
Beyond payments, it offers tools for sales tracking, business insights and merchant funding to help businesses manage and grow more effectively.
According to Braude, the company’s growth strategy is increasingly centred on creating a connected ecosystem of tools rather than standalone products.
Yoco's approach is to integrate payments, point-of-sale functionality and business management tools into a single platform, reducing complexity and lowering total ownership costs for merchants.
According to Braude, in the local SME payments and point-of-sale vertical, Yoco currently holds between 34% and 36% market share in the Western Cape, around 9% nationally, and approximately 19% within its key focus sectors of food and beverage, retail, and health and beauty.
“Many small businesses still spend significant time reconciling information across separate systems, often requiring additional staff resources simply to manage administration. Our goal is to increase market share by making sure we’re providing offerings that actually provide value to the merchant and provide outsized value for what they’re paying. We believe very deeply in the business that we should grow when our merchants grow.”
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