• Yoco payment options are now available to Shopstar customers.
• This now means that businesses who build their online stores with Shopstar can leverage digital payments and features like Apple Pay.
• Yoco and Shopstar have announced a strategic partnership in a highly turbulent ecommerce landscape locally.

In a move set to benefit small businesses in South Africa, Cape Town-based ecommerce platform Shopstar has added payment options from Yoco, a local startup that has taken the country’s small business market by storm with its cheap and in-demand payment facilitation technologies.

Shopstar customers can now use Yoco’s secure payment processing solutions as they have been integrated into the platform. This means the added wide range of payment methods of credit cards, debit cards, and mobile payments such as Apple Pay.

The integration comes after a strategic partnership was struck between the two local finance and retail platforms. Together, Yoco and Shopstar hope to provide more payment and ecommerce solutions that are easy and seamless for local small businesses.

“Our partnership with Shopstar represents a significant step forward in this mission, as we work together to provide business owners on our platform with access to cutting-edge ecommerce solutions coupled with seamless payment processing capabilities,” enthuses Marcello Schermer, Head of Partnerships & International Expansion at Yoco.

Users of Shopstar, a platform where small businesses can create online storefronts, are already chiming in on the partnership and the added benefits it brings.

“As a Shopstar user, I really find it easy to integrate Yoco to my website – this has made payment processes seamless for my business with quick payouts. The Yoco ecosystem allows me to gather all payments in one place, do my reports and also check my analytics with ease,” explains Shopstar customer Marion Hermans, Founder of Marley Grey, explains.

The partnership between the brands is also timely, as according to InfoBip, the continent-wide ecommerce landscape is expected to grow to the value of $75 billion by 2025, meanwhile Yoco-partner the Rand Merchant Bank predicts that South Africa’s ecommerce will match ecommerce found in country’s like the US and in Europe by 2026.

One of the reasons why local ecommerce may match international ecommerce in development could be the impending South African launch of Amazon, which is already onboarding shops and small businesses unto its platform.

With big players like Takealot now expected to go head to head with Amazon, and small players like Shopstar and Yoco handling the more grounded businesses, 2024 will be an interesting year for South Africa’s ecommerce market. Who will be able to grab the biggest slice of the pie as customers across the world are spending less in the face of a cost of living crisis.