Nona Digital acquired by South Africa’s Yoco

African payments and software company, Yoco, has acquired the leading fintech and Web3 software development agency in Africa, Nona Digital.

The acquisition significantly accelerates Yoco’s roadmap by bringing a team of highly specialised fintech product and technology professionals to join Yoco’s team.

Yoco has been a Nona client since 2019. The existing relationships, institutional knowledge and shared values that the two organisations have cultivated to date mean the Nona team can hit the ground running and accelerate the Yoco roadmap from day 1.

Yoco plans to be the primary financial platform for the self-employed in Africa and the Middle East, with ambitions to serve 1 million entrepreneurs by 2024 through its payments software and capital products.

Lungisa Matshoba, CTO at Yoco explains, “We are excited to welcome Nona and its team to Yoco. Nona is an industry leader behind some of the best digital banking and Web3 products both in the region and globally. All of this makes them a great fit for the direction we are taking and the evolution of our products.  After working with the team for over a year, we realised that the cultural alignment between the two organisations and a shared passion for creating financial products for millions of self-employed Africans made working together a no brainer.”

Mike Scott, CEO at Nona says: “We have spent the last 10 years building an exceptional team and capability in the Fintech and Web3 space. This acquisition allows us to direct everything that we have built towards a vision and mission that we believe in, and that matters. It is a natural evolution for a strong services business to move into product and we are very excited to now be part of the Yoco story.”

This is the third and largest acquisition of a software development agency by Yoco since 2019, having acquired Cobi Interactive in 2019 and Dado in 2021. This latest addition takes Yoco’s team size up to 500 people, 50% of which are product and technology-focused.

Off the back of its $83M Series C in 2021, Yoco is increasing its talent footprint across Africa, Europe & Middle East and bringing entrepreneurial and experienced talent from around the world.  “We have been bringing in talent aggressively across South Africa and other markets – employing people remotely across 15 geographies and in our talent hubs in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, Cairo and Dubai,” concludes Matshoba.

Read more: SA payments platform Yoco raises $83m in funding

Featured image: supplied by Yoco