Yoco, a financial platform for small business, has launched a suite of online payment solutions ideal for health and fitness businesses and professionals who need to sustain their cash flow during and beyond the COVID-19 lockdown.
Yoco, which currently supports over 80,000 small businesses and 4,000 businesses and entrepreneurs in the sport and fitness sector, operates a successful in-person payments solution, and began enabling online payments for its customers when the lockdown was implemented.
Supporting small businesses
“Yoco’s mission has always centred around helping small businesses thrive and supporting them is more important now than ever before,” says Katlego Maphai, co-founder and CEO.
“The national lockdown has had a severe impact on our merchants. Through our platform and the results of a recent merchant survey, we have seen up to a 90% decrease in in-person transactions since the lockdown began. We knew that the best way to support our merchants was to develop products that would enable them to do business online and keep money coming in through this period.”
And the health and fitness sector has suffered like most other industries, adds co-founder and CTO of Yoco, Lungisa Matshoba.
Pivot to a digital marketplace
“Many businesses and professionals have pivoted and moved their operations online with Zoom personal training sessions and virtual group instruction. This has helped the industry maintain its element of interaction and motivation, which is a vital differentiator in a cluttered digital marketplace filled with health and fitness apps,” elaborates Lungisa.
The challenge, he says, lies in billing for those services and receiving payments to sustain cashflow during this challenging period.
“Survival through this crisis is all about creativity and providing innovative solutions that enable these digital pivots. If you were relevant yesterday, you can remain relevant today by embracing digital tools. That’s why ingenuity remains our motivator,” adds Lungisa.
Making client payments easier
The Yoco team has developed three new payment solutions:
All three are purpose-built for small businesses to do business online in different ways, simply and securely.
The Yoco Online Payment suite enables merchants to securely accept online payments, as well as easily track and reconcile all invoices and payments, whether in-person or online. Each solution is designed with specific use cases in mind.
Payment Request gives fitness professionals and businesses that are trading through lockdown the ability to request and accept online card payments for services rendered, conveniently tracked within their sales history.
“Most fitness professionals rely on manual invoicing and EFTs to receive payment, which is onerous and admin intensive for both the professional and the client. Our Payment Page solution makes that easier, giving fitness professionals the ability to simply send a link to their client to make payment through a personalised online page to remove the friction.”
Operating beyond lockdown
And with gyms likely to remain closed in the early phases of the lockdown roll-back, and social distancing here to stay for some time to come, personal trainers and other fitness professionals will need to find ways to sustain their businesses and maintain positive cash flow.
“For those clients who don’t want to engage via digital platforms, our Gift Vouchers allows clients to support their trainer’s cash flow needs now by purchasing a voucher, which they can redeem once the lockdown ends,” adds Lungisa.
This also creates opportunities for fitness professionals and businesses to offer discounts on bulk bookings for future sessions, which can help to plug funding shortfalls during this challenging period.
“COVID-19 has made contactless and online payments a priority for all of our merchants, no matter which industry they find themselves in. Supporting merchants through this process of adaptation and innovation is a part of our mission,” concludes Katlego.
The Online Payment suite is available on the Yoco app from now to all Yoco customers. To further support small businesses, Yoco is also launching a small business directory at www.supportsmall.co.za. Owners and entrepreneurs are encouraged to register on the directory to make their businesses discoverable by consumers across South Africa.
Author: Pedro van Gaalen
When he’s not writing about sport or health and fitness, Pedro is probably out training for his next marathon or ultra-marathon. He’s worked as a fitness professional and as a marketing and comms expert. He now combines his passions in his role as managing editor at Fitness magazine.
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