Yoco
A South African card processor built for small business, covering both card machines and online checkout. The free Core plan carries no monthly fee, which is what makes it the cheapest card rail here for most merchants.
Yoco published fees
From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card.
Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026.
support.yoco.help/articles/270145The fees
What Yoco charges.
Every line carries the date we last checked it and where we read it. The lines our calculator models are generated from the same engine, so this table and the tool cannot disagree.
| Line | Rate | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headline rate | 2.55–2.95% | Cards · Core plan | Headline rate: 2.55–2.95% From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Fixed fee per transaction | None | Added on top of the percentage | Fixed fee per transaction: None From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Minimum per transaction | None | A floor on percentage plus fixed fee | Minimum per transaction: None From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Monthly / setup | R0 | On the plan we model | Monthly / setup: R0 From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Payout fee | Free | Charged per payout run | Payout fee: Free From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Refund fee | None | Charged to process a refund | Refund fee: None From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Processing fee on a refund | Kept by the provider | The hidden cost: a refunded sale usually still costs you the original fee | Processing fee on a refund: Kept by the provider From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Chargeback penalty | Not published | Not published by any provider. Our model provisions R120,00 per chargeback as an editorial assumption | Chargeback penalty: Not published From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| International and Amex, Core plan | 3.40% / 3.20% | Below and above R50,000 a month. International and Amex price identically | International and Amex, Core plan: 3.40% / 3.20% From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Plus plan | R249 a month | Per location, first month free. Local cards 2.75%, dropping to 2.55% above R50,000 a month | Plus plan: R249 a month From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Pro plan | R499 a month | Per location, first month free. Local cards a flat 2.55% at any volume | Pro plan: R499 a month From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
| Custom rates | R200,000+ | Monthly volume at which Yoco offers negotiated rates and an account manager, after three months in a row | Custom rates: R200,000+ From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
Online rates, ex VAT. In-person rates differ and are lower. We model the free Core plan, which is what a new merchant gets by default. Yoco's 2.95 / 2.75 / 2.55% figures are three SUBSCRIPTION PLANS, not volume tiers: within a plan the only step is at R50,000 a month, applied after three consecutive months above it. Yoco publishes no fixed fee and no fee minimum. Its gateway FAQ says money from an online sale takes up to two business days to reflect; standard and weekly payouts are free on every plan.
What it accepts
Payment methods.
Strengths
- The free Core plan has no monthly fee, no setup fee and free automatic payouts, so the percentage is very nearly the whole cost.
- At our default scenario it is the cheapest card rail on this site.
- One account covers both the card machine and the online store, which is rare locally.
- The rate steps down at R50,000 a month without moving you onto a paid plan.
Watch-outs
- No recurring-billing API. If you need subscriptions, this is the wrong provider.
- An Instant EFT method exists at checkout, but Yoco no longer publishes a rate for it anywhere, so we cannot model a bank rail.
- The advertised 2.55% requires the R499 Pro plan, or R50,000 a month sustained over three months on Core.
- Plus and Pro charge their monthly fee per location, which multiplies for a merchant with several outlets.
For developers
Integration and API.
Yoco offers a hosted online checkout, payment links and a REST API with webhooks, alongside its card machines. The plugin coverage is narrower than PayFast’s, so a store on a less common platform is more likely to need custom work.
The significant gap for developers is recurring billing: Yoco has no subscription API, which we confirmed in the fee research. Card-on-file subscription businesses should look at Peach Payments or Stitch instead, or run Yoco for once-off sales alongside a second gateway for the recurring side.
As always, confirm payments server-side from the webhook rather than the browser redirect, and make webhook handling idempotent so a retry cannot double-credit an order.
Licence and status
Yoco publishes no licence, PCI level or acquiring-sponsor detail on its own pages that we could verify. We have left this blank rather than infer it.
Yoco licence and status We could not confirm this against a primary source. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026.
Yoco is not a sponsor of this site, and this profile is not a paid placement. Nothing on this page was seen by Yoco before it was published.
In context
How Yoco compares.
The whole field, ranked by what actually reaches your account, computed by the same engine that powers the calculator. Not a shortlist we picked.
| # | Provider | Rail | Headline | Chargebacks | Effective rate | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ozow pay-by-bank | Pay-by-bank · no chargebacks | 1.50% | None | 1.80% | R2 703 |
| 2 | Peach Pay by Bank | Pay by Bank · no chargebacks | 1.50% | None | 2.05% | R3 075 |
| 3 | Paystack EFT | EFT · no chargebacks | 2.00% | None | 2.37% | R3 553 |
| 4 | Stitch Capitec Pay | Capitec Pay · no chargebacks | 2.00% | None | 2.38% | R3 563 |
| 5 | iKhokha Instant EFT | Instant EFT · no chargebacks | 2.00% | None | 2.38% | R3 563 |
| 6 | PayFast Instant EFT | Instant EFT · no chargebacks | 2.00% | None | 2.41% | R3 609 |
| 7 | Yoco This provider | Cards · Core plan | 2.55% | Card risk | 3.04% | R4 563 |
| 8 | iKhokha | Cards · SME payments | 2.85% | Card risk | 3.40% | R5 106 |
| 9 | Ozow cards | Cards via partners | 2.85% | Card risk | 3.42% | R5 133 |
| 10 | Stitch Express | Cards · orchestration | 2.95% | Card risk | 3.52% | R5 282 |
| 11 | Paystack | Cards · best DX | 2.90% | Card risk | 3.64% | R5 458 |
| 12 | Peach Payments | Cards · subscriptions | 2.95% | Card risk | 3.79% | R5 683 |
| 13 | PayFast | Widest methods | 3.20% | Card risk | 4.21% | R6 320 |
A R650,00 average basket, R150 000,00 a month, 3% refunded, 4 payout runs a month, incl 15% VAT. Quote-based providers are absent from this table because they publish no rate to compute, not because they were excluded. Card rails carry a chargeback provision of R120 per chargeback, which is an editorial assumption, not a sourced figure: no provider on this site publishes a chargeback penalty amount. Run your own numbers in the calculator.
See Yoco against your real numbers
Set your basket, volume and refund rate to find your effective rate, then compare it with every other gateway.
