Yoco Co-Founder, Carl Wazen — Revolutionizing South Africa’s Digital Payments
Miguel Armaza sits down with Carl Wazen, Co-Founder & Chief Business Officer at Yoco, South Africa’s leading payments platform for small businesses offering a convenient way to accept card payments in-person or online.
Founded in 2012, the company serves over 100,000 small businesses and has received multiple rounds of investment from industry leaders like Quona, Partech, Greyhound Capital, FMO and many more.
We covered a wide range of topics, including:
- Carl’s background and his entrepreneurial journey in Cape Town, South Africa as an immigrant outsider
- Stories about the early days of Yoco and how they took the company from 0 to 1
- The importance of company culture in the fast-moving fintech space
- Navigating COVID and Yoco’s meaningful role in helping small businesses during this time
- Exercising radical transparency during the pandemic and why they decided to start publishing the daily Small Business Recovery Monitor
- The State of the fintech industry in South Africa and the rest of the continent
- Entrepreneurial advice for founders in emerging markets
- And a lot more!
Full interview → Spotify | Soundcloud | Apple
Carl Wazen
At Yoco, Carl has focused his efforts on driving growth (Over 100,000 merchants acquired) and raising capital ($23M in funding raised to date from the likes of Partech, Orange, FMO, Quona, Velocity, Greyhound, CRE). Prior to co-founding Yoco, Carl spent 7 years working as a management consultant and private equity investor across Africa and the Middle East, helping large telecom operators expand their Africa footprint at the height of the continent’s telecoms boom.
About Yoco
Yoco is an African technology company that builds tools and services to help small businesses get paid, run their business better, and grow. The company believes that by opening up more possibilities for entrepreneurs to be successful, they can help create more jobs, enable people to thrive and help to drive our economy forward.
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Host of the Wharton Fintech Podcast and Co-Founder of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas.
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