"I noticed Square for the first time in the [San Francisco] Mission District in 2011 while strolling through an antique store. An old friend took me to a hole-in-the-wall barbeque eatery run by an African American lady," he recalled. Here was a small business with a good product, nothing much else, and they were running their business with their phone." Maphai returned to his home in South Africa and launched his own mobile point-of-sale (M-POS) startup called Yoco with three friends in October 2015. After this first year, Yoco had processed R13-million (About $1-million), a not-insignificant amount for a fintech startup in South Africa, which has the most sophisticated financial services industry in Africa and is well served by several major banks that regularly receive global awards for innovation and excellence.

Source: Forbes October 04, 2017 15:11 UTC