Shop2Shop and SallyPOS have announced a formal strategic partnership that integrates two previously separate layers of the merchant experience – card payments and point of sale (POS) – into a unified ecosystem.
The collaboration places the SallyPOS platform directly onto the Shop2Shop card acceptance device.
This creates a solution that covers ordering, stock management, debtor management, prep-kitchen display systems, card acquiring, real-time reporting and VAS vending in one place.
The Shop2Shop business has grown exponentially over the last seven years and, with just under 300 staff, the organisation has become a strong name and trusted partner in the informal sector.
With more than 160 000 devices across South Africa and through its group subsidiary, Retail Assist, Shop2Shop is able to offer its own acquiring services that enables real-time settlement into the Shop2Shop trading account at competitive rates and low transaction costs.
Together, they cover the full merchant lifecycle from when an order is placed to payment being confirmed and recorded.
The SallyPOS platform runs directly on the Shop2Shop device, which is the same terminal already sitting on counters in spaza shops and township retail environments across the country. A shop owner can now process a sale, check stock levels and accept a card payment from a single screen and in a single workflow.
When payment is initiated, it moves directly into Shop2Shop’s acquiring layer and returns to close the transaction without interruption. The result is a cleaner, faster, more secure experience and a digital record of every transaction that, over time, builds the kind of financial profile that makes access to finance and working capital advances possible.
Shop2Shop’s own payment rails remove the cost layers that third-party dependent providers cannot. SallyPOS’s direct integration between the POS and the payment terminal closes the gap where fraud or manual errors most often enter, which is the manual step between closing a bill and processing payment.
Annelene Dippenaar, chief business officer at Shop2Shop, says: “We have always believed that access to digital payments is only the first step.
“The partnership with SallyPOS allows us to move beyond enablement into business infrastructure. By combining payments, operations and real-time data into a single experience, we’re giving both informal traders and formal operators the tools to run more resilient, more profitable businesses.
“That’s how you start to close the structural gaps in South Africa.”
According to SallyPOS’s Michael da Silva: “A world-class product means nothing if it stops working in the middle of a service and there’s no one to call.
“What we’re bringing to market with a fully integrated POS that covers acquiring, stock control, loyalty and debtor management in one place, is only as valuable as the team standing behind it. That’s what makes this different.”