Katlego Maphai's Yoco acquires AI startup Dyner to build smarter tools for 200,000 small businesses

Yoco has made its first known acquisition, buying Dyner.ai, an AI-native operating system built for restaurants and independent businesses, as the South African fintech moves beyond card payments into the broader business of running a small company.

The deal was announced May 28 and terms were not disclosed. It brings together two companies that were already quietly intertwined: several of Dyner's early customers, including Plato Coffee, were already Yoco merchants.

Dyner was founded by Thalentha Ngobeni and Chris du Plessis, both actuaries who came out of Adrian Gore's Discovery group. Ngobeni worked inside the CEO's office, and du Plessis spent time at Discovery Invest before the two left to build software for restaurant operators. Their backgrounds in data, strategy and systems shaped what Dyner became: a tool that helps restaurants manage inventory, place supplier orders, track margins and handle the operational complexity of running a kitchen and a business at the same time.

Yoco co-founder and chief business officer Carl Wazen said what drew the company to Dyner was not only the product but how the team had built it. "What impressed us most was not only the quality of the product, but the speed, intensity and ambition with which the Dyner team immersed themselves in the realities of running a restaurant and built their product alongside their customers," he said.

Yoco's pitch on the acquisition is philosophical as much as commercial. The company argues that the benefits of artificial intelligence have largely flowed to large enterprises and affluent consumers, while independent business owners are again left waiting.

"Just as we helped democratise access to digital payments, we see a similar opportunity with AI," Wazen said. Yoco processes more than $1 billion in card payments annually across more than 200,000 small businesses in South Africa, which contributes an estimated 35 to 40 percent of the country's GDP and supports around 60 percent of employment.

Dyner will continue building its platform independently while gradually integrating into Yoco's infrastructure, merchant ecosystem and go-to-market operations. The goal is to give independent businesses access to AI tools that reduce operational complexity, surface insights and automate repetitive work — capabilities that until now have largely been reserved for bigger players.