South Africa is a land rich in entrepreneurial spirit. From street vendors to market stalls, small businesses to side hustles, South Africans are driven to create their own opportunities.
And yet South Africa has one of the highest business failure rates in the world. According to Cova Advisory, five out of seven South African businesses close in the first year.
It’s understandable when you look at the landscape. With supply chain difficulties, political tensions, civil unrest and inflation, South African businesses must contend with so much.
While Covid-19 and subsequent lockdowns haven't made the situation easier over the last two years, it’s not the root cause. South Africa has historically been a challenging playing field for small businesses.
It was against this backdrop ten years ago that three entrepreneurs decided to do something about it by helping make business easier for small, medium, and micro-sized businesses (SMMEs).
Matt Putman, Ramsay Daly, and Clive Putman launched iKhokha in February 2012. From the early days of starting up in a garage in Durban, iKhokha is now one of the fastest-growing financial technology companies on the continent with a headcount of over 200 employees and growing.
According to Ramsay Daly, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at iKhokha, small business enablement was iKhokha’s goal from the outset.
"From the beginning, we wanted to create a solution to help South African SMEs succeed,” says Daly.
"It started as card acceptance, and along the way, we've found other exciting areas which we can help SMEs solve for," he says.
In addition to their zero rental fee card machines, iKhokha recently launched the first in a series of ecommerce products. The iKhokha Payment Gateway is now available on WordPress and WooCommerce, with Wix and other website builders set to follow soon.
The payment provider recently released their revamped mobile app, which includes new functionality and features. Soon iKhokha will launch iK Pay Link into their app ecosystem, enabling merchants to get paid online without a website.
These are the first in a series of updates and product releases in 2022.
To meet these product development demands, iKhokha is radically scaling their recruitment efforts to swell their ranks with people who believe in Putman and Daly’s vision to make business easier and, in turn, increase the success rate of South Africa’s SMEs.
“Small businesses are the catalyst that will turn our economy around, yet they are overlooked and undersupported by traditional financial service providers. Now in our tenth year, we’re looking forward to bridging that gap more than ever,” says iKhokha CEO Matt Putman.
iKhokha is actively recruiting. View iKhokha's current openings on their careers page.