Business technology company Zoho has launched a South African edition of its point-of-sales (POS) solution that enables local retailers to manage billing, inventory, purchases, payments, customer relations and loyalty programmes.

The card-present, in-person payment collection tool was one of the elements Zoho was missing in South Africa and is a core tool of most businesses to enable them to collect payments easily and quickly, said Zoho South Africa regional head Andrew Bourne on July 27.

“A POS solution provides us with an advantage. Zoho aims to provide a foundational tool with features that businesses can customise to suit their needs,” he said during a media briefing in Midrand, Gauteng.

The solution has been optimised for retail and connects to the hardware present in stores, such as weighing machines and barcode scanners, among others.

The system can also manage data offline and has been used in India for ecotourism.

The solution will update the transactions, once connectivity is reestablished, he said on the sidelines of the company's yearly conference.

Small, medium-sized and micro retail enterprises can use the solution to monitor stock levels, configure reorder points, receive low-stock alerts and raise purchase orders to maintain inventory levels.

It also supports local value-added tax requirements and businesses can configure tax rates, including zero-rated supplies and tax-exempt items, where applicable.

Additionally, businesses can synchronise inventory across their online and physical stores to maintain accurate stock levels across sales channels. This also supports omnichannel retail operations.

Retailers can also manage multiple stores across the country using a single system for centralised inventory visibility and store performance tracking, among others.

The POS solution also integrates into enterprise resource planning, shipping, payments and automation tools to provide businesses with access to the capabilities they require to trade.

“Zoho POS provides retailers with back office functionality, desktop billing and mobile billing, accounting, marketplace and mobile store and hardware integration. It also integrates into third-party systems, such as shipping carriers, payment gateways and payment solutions,” Bourne said.

“The solution also enables companies to bill customers in different languages, or offer self-check-out services to customers.

“Then we come to the business analytics. Businesses will be able to view their performance in the mobile app, view reports of different business functions and have real-time insights into their operations, and it also detects anomalies in transactions that are flagged for review,” he said.

The POS solution is available from R120 per location per month for the standard solution, R240 a month per location for the professional system and R400 per month per location for the premium service.

Further, the POS solution integrated into Zoho's broader business technology portfolio, which provided enterprises with access to a unified business ecosystem, Bourne said.

PERFORMANCE
Zoho has grown nine-fold in South Africa over the past eight years. Its yearly revenue grew by 34% in 2025 and its revenue has grown by 60% year-to-date.

The company designed its business systems as scalable, unified systems that were easy to implement, he said.

Zoho, which operates in 150 countries, generated more than $1-billion in global revenue in 2025.

South Africa is currently one of Zoho's fastest growing markets. It is one of the company's top 15 countries that collectively contribute 80% of its global revenue.

“The POS solution was an important element we were missing in South Africa. However, we own all the layers of our technology stacks. This enables us to pick and choose the most cost-effective ways to build stacks.

“We also manufacture our own server equipment, with our design aims being to reduce server costs and improve their energy efficiency,” said Bourne.

Further, the company was also entering into the large enterprise space in South Africa after gaining a large client, which contributed to the increase in revenue, he added.

The key industries the company serves are financial services, manufacturing, retail, IT hardware and IT services, and professional non-IT services.

“Our next step in South Africa will be to open local data centres. Data sovereignty is important for public sector systems. While all our international data centres are Protection of Personal Information Act-compliant, local data centres will allow us to handle sensitive information for government departments and agencies.

“However, we are most likely to rent space from data centre companies and deploy our own equipment into fully-serviced environments,” he explained.