In a statement, Yoco said the lockdown, which is due to end on April 30, had had a severe impact on merchants. 

"Through our platform and the results of a recent merchant survey, we have seen up to a 90 percent decrease in in-person transactions since the lockdown began," co-founder and CEO Katlego Maphai said.

"We knew that the best way to support our merchants was to develop products that would enable them to do business online and keep money coming in through this period."

Yoco, which recently reached a customer base of 80,000 small businesses, has developed the payment page, gift vouchers and payment request solutions which are all purpose-built for small businesses to do transactions online simply and securely.

“Our growing volume of merchants puts into perspective the number of people who rely on us to help them do business,” co-founder Lungisa Matshoba said.

"We have been developing these solutions for a few months; however with the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, we knew that we needed to get them into our merchants’ hands as quickly as possible.”

The Yoco online payment suite enables merchants to securely accept online payments, as well as easily track and reconcile all invoices and payments whether in-person or online. 

The payment page enables merchants to receive card payments through a personalized online page, removing the friction of electronic funds transfers, while the gift vouchers solution allows customers to support their local small businesses' cash flow needs immediately, and redeem the vouchers for products or services once the lockdown is lifted.

The payment request system gives those merchants who are still allowed to trade under the lockdown regulations the ability to request and accept online card payments for sales, conveniently tracked within their sales history.

African News Agency (ANA)