UK-based marketing, payments and loyalty company Yoyo and wiGroup, the South African-based mobile rewards software company are joining forces to create a global loyalty company under the Yoyo brand.
The new Yoyo will service existing and new clients through its combined operations in the UK, Europe, Africa, and Australasia.
The company has raised additional primary funding from SaltPay, supported by existing investors IP Group.
The two companies each offered a variety of payment, loyalty and reward Software as a Service solutions to their clients, serving major brands like Caffe Nero, Paul, Burger King, KFC, Dunkin Donuts, and Woolworths across the UK, Europe and in South Africa. The new Yoyo will focus on high demand customer engagement and loyalty products, which drive both new customers, repeat business, as well as increased frequency and ticket-size to merchants. Core services include:
• Yoyo Wallet: A mobile application that combines payments, ordering and loyalty to provide customers with the most rewarding buying experience at thousands of outlets across the UK.
• Retail branded applications: Takes the power of Yoyo and white labels the solution for merchants to own the customer experience, providing them with powerful online tools to drive customer acquisition, retention and increased spend.
• Enterprise Rewards: Provides businesses with a rewards API to issue digital gift cards to customers and employees to incentivise and reward.
Yoyo co-founder and CEO, Michael Rolph and wiGroup co-founder and CEO Bevan Ducasse have been working for a few months to bring the companies together.
Michael Rolph commented, “We saw in wiGroup many of the capabilities that customers in the UK and EMEA were asking for in addition to the products and services we already provided. In Bevan and the wiGroup team, we saw great talent, a similar culture and outstanding leadership that suggested that combining the two companies would create a best-of-breed global company.”, said Rolph.
“Through joining forces we’re able to leverage resource across regions, to invest behind one consolidated SaaS product, further our joint vision of delivering the world’s most rewarding buying experience and advance a global growth strategy”, added Ducasse, “This is particularly important in the current economic and COVID climate and we will be making several exciting product announcements in the coming months about how we can help support the SME market.”
David Yates, chairman of Yoyo Wallet added: “The combination of know-how and skills brought about by the merger of Yoyo and wiGroup, together with renewed investment, enables a bright future for the company. We look forward to continuing to serve our customers with a laser-focus on improving their ‘bottom-line’ through innovation in loyalty services.
