Yoco lands $100 million from Victory Park to expand merchant financing

What the deal is

Yoco Technologies, the South African digital commerce firm best known for its card terminals for small businesses, lined up a $100 million credit facility with Victory Park Capital Advisors LLC to bolster funding for its merchant network. Chief Executive Officer Carsten Höltkemeyer said the money will support finance and cash advances to Yoco's customers.

It is the company's first step into the debt market. Victory Park, headquartered in Chicago, oversees roughly $3.6 billion and has put more than $12 billion to work across 260 investments since 2007.

How it will work for merchants

"The deal will for the first time give Yoco direct control over the financing needs for our merchants at scale and in-house," Höltkemeyer said. He added that "advances will range from 2,000 rand to 1.5 million rand," with typical uses including staffing, inventory, equipment upgrades and opening new locations.

Merchants using Yoco's devices can access Yoco Capital and may be pre-approved based on live sales data, he said. Once approved, funds arrive instantly and repayments are deducted automatically from daily sales.

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Why it matters for your portfolio

The facility signals continued global appetite for Africa's scaling fintech scene, and it comes as private-debt facilities have become more important for the region's maturing tech companies. Yoco, based in Cape Town, now enables payments for 200,000 merchants, with transactions from 30 million consumers each year, and has processed more than $15 billion to date.

South Africa's small firms are short an estimated 350 billion rand ($21.2 billion) in funding, the Access to Finance report by Finfind finds. Höltkemeyer said traditional bank credit remains hard to access, and that providing working capital at scale can spur growth across the sector.

The bottom line for investors

To date, Yoco has routed R6.5 billion (approximately $394 million) through partner channels to merchants, and the Victory Park arrangement brings those financing capabilities in-house at scale. If faster access to capital helps its customers grow, that can translate into more payment volume across Yoco's platform. For portfolios exposed to African fintech or private credit, it is another data point that funding is flowing toward operators with distribution, data and a clear path to scale.

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