Yoco’s Dyner.ai deal ushers in new AI era for South African SMEs

South African fintech Yoco is banking on artificial intelligence (AI) to be the next major growth lever for small businesses. To advance that vision, the commerce platform has acquired Dyner.ai, an AI-native operating system built to help Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), particularly restaurants, streamline operations.

In an interview with TechCabal on Thursday, Carl Wazen, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer at Yoco, hailed the acquisition as a major strategic evolution for the company, which has built its reputation helping small businesses accept digital payments.

“This forms part of our ongoing plans of evolving into a broader commerce platform combining payments, software, financial services and AI-powered operational tools for more than 200 000 merchants across South Africa,” he said.

The acquisition represents a maturing local tech ecosystem, with two South African startups joining forces to build enterprise-grade AI-powered tools for SMEs. Importantly, the AI empowerment deal marks a turning point for township entrepreneurs who operate with tight margins and limited administrative capacity. Wazen believes that it unlocks access to enterprise-grade technology previously reserved for large corporates.

The Yoco co-founder highlighted that SMEs contribute an estimated 35% to 40% of South Africa’s economy and support roughly 60% of employment, yet many still struggle with stock losses, fraud, poor cash-flow visibility, and inefficient operations. Wazen believes AI can help bridge that gap by automating routine tasks, detecting inefficiencies and surfacing insights that help business owners make better decisions.

“This is really about building the future for the independent business segment. The next big challenge is really about giving them capability, not just access to payments, but real capability that was otherwise reserved for enterprises and affluent consumers,” he said.

Founded by former actuaries Thalentha Ngobeni and Chris du Plessis, Dyner.ai has quietly built an intelligent operating system for restaurants that helps owners manage stock, invoices, supplier relationships, reporting, margins and daily workflows. More importantly, the platform includes an embedded AI assistant capable of analysing business data and responding to operational questions in real time.

Instead of spending hours sorting through spreadsheets or reconciling sales manually, business owners can ask simple questions such as why stock levels are inconsistent, why profits dipped, or which products are underperforming.

“It plugs into the data from your point of sale, accounting and different business systems, giving merchants personalised insights in a way traditional software simply cannot,” said Wazen. “Imagine every day having a curated list of priorities surfaced to you automatically, whether it’s unusual stock movement, unreconciled payments or pricing issues.”

For township businesses and smaller merchants, the value proposition may lie less in futuristic AI hype and more in cost savings. Wazen said Dyner has already demonstrated measurable profitability improvements among existing restaurant clients by helping businesses reduce waste, identify theft, detect fraud and optimise pricing. “It’s not a fluffy service but a very real business solution,” he stated.

The acquisition also represents Yoco’s response to a maturing payments market. When the company launched, only around 200 000 South African merchants accepted card payments. Today, Yoco alone serves that number. “Payments were the starting point because getting paid is foundational,” said Wazen. “But merchants increasingly want one accountable partner to help them run their businesses.”

Thalentha Ngobeni, Co-Founder and CEO of Dyner.ai said joining Yoco’s ecosystem dramatically expands their reach. “We founded Dyner with the belief that independent businesses deserve the same quality of operational technology and intelligence historically reserved for large enterprises,” said Thalentha Ngobeni, Co-Founder and CEO of Dyner.ai. “Joining Yoco gives us the infrastructure, reach and platform to accelerate that vision at a far greater scale.”