South African payment startup, Yoco buys leading fintech, Web3 software development agency Nona Digital

Yoco, a South African payments company, has acquired Nona Digital, a Cape Town-based fintech and Web3 software development agency, to accelerate its roadmap by bringing in a team of highly specialized fintech product and technology professionals.

Yoco creates tools and services to assist small businesses in accepting card payments in-store and online, obtaining loans, and managing their day-to-day operations. The startup has become the preferred payments partner for over 150,000 South African small businesses, processing over $1 billion in card payments per year.

Nona Digital was recently acquired by the company, which raised $83 million in Series C funding in July.

Nona was founded in 2012 in Cape Town by Mike Scott, Ed O’Reilly, Gordon Angus, and two others with the vision of delivering software products and teams at a level that raises the industry as a whole. They have evolved into true fintech experts over the years, with a particular flair for Web3 application development.

Yoco has been a Nona client since 2019, and the existing relationships, institutional knowledge, and shared values between the two organizations mean that the Nona team can hit the ground running and accelerate the Yoco roadmap from day one.

“We are very pleased to welcome Nona and its team to Yoco.” Nona is an industry pioneer who has created some of the best digital banking and Web3 products in the region and around the world. All of this makes them an excellent match for the direction we’re heading and the evolution of our products. Working with the team for over a year, we realized that the cultural alignment between the two organizations, as well as a shared passion for creating financial products for millions of self-employed Africans, made collaboration a no-brainer,” said Lungisa Matshoba, CTO at Yoco.

Nona’s CEO, Mike Scott, stated that the company had spent the previous ten years building an exceptional team and capability in the fintech and Web3 space.

“With this acquisition, we can direct everything we’ve built toward a vision and mission that we believe in and that matters.” It is a natural progression for a strong services business to move into product, and we are thrilled to be a part of the Yoco story,” he said.

Yoco intends to be the primary financial platform for self-employed people in Africa and the Middle East, with a goal of serving one million entrepreneurs through its payments software and capital products by 2024. The company claims that this type of team acquisition is especially effective in today’s environment of high talent demand.

Yoco’s third and largest acquisition of a software development agency since 2019, following the acquisitions of Cobi Interactive in 2019 and Dado in 2021. Yoco’s team now numbers 500 people, with half of them focusing on product and technology.

Yoco is expanding its talent footprint across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East as a result of its Series C last year.

“We have been aggressively bringing in talent across South Africa and other markets – employing people remotely across 15 geographies and in our talent hubs in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, Cairo, and Dubai,” Matshoba said.