Duplo and Ozow Announce Strategic Partnership to Transform Local Payments and Expense Management for Businesses in South Africa

Duplo, the leading financial operating system for African businesses, has partnered with Ozow, South Africa’s premier payment gateway, to transform how businesses in South Africa manage their end-to-end financial operations. 

While thousands of South African businesses – including market leaders like Takealot, Mr D Food and Superbalist – already rely on Ozow for secure, instant Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) payments, this integration marks a significant evolution. By pairing Ozow’s robust payment rails with Duplo’s sophisticated financial operating system, businesses can now move beyond simple transactions to a fully automated workflow that handles invoicing, reconciliation, and expense management in one unified platform.

As businesses grow, managing payments, approvals, and expenses across teams can quickly become complex. Recent research revealed that South African SMEs spend an average of 15 to 20 hours per month on manual financial administrative tasks. For larger enterprises, this can explode to over 120 wasted hours monthly due to the complexity of matching diverse payment methods. These manual processes are not just slow; they are expensive. Businesses can lose up to 5% of their revenue to “leakage” – unmatched transactions that become irrecoverable because they were only spotted weeks after the fact.

This partnership addresses this critical pain point, enabling businesses to turn what was once an administrative burden into an operational advantage.. The most significant shift occurs at the point of sale: as payments flow through Ozow, they are instantly matched to invoices within the Duplo dashboard. This real-time reconciliation eliminates up to 90% of manual data entry, effectively closing the “manual gap” that previously stalled business growth. Beyond incoming revenue, the platform provides a holistic view of financial health, offering seamless tools to monitor corporate spending and manage vendor payouts within one unified workflow. 

Companies like Maersk, Krones, DP World, Baobab, Miva Open University, Eat N’Go, IMG, SMT, and more already trust Duplo to automate their payment workflows and maintain full visibility over their financial operations. Through this partnership, South African businesses of all sizes can now access that same level of financial sophistication.

Tunde Akinnuwa, Chief Operating Officer and Co-founder of Duplo, said,  “We are excited to join forces with Ozow to help businesses in South Africa scale faster and with fewer administrative headaches. For too long, the speed of local payments hasn’t been matched by the speed of back-office accounting. By bridging that gap, we are turning payment operations from an administrative burden into a competitive advantage. Our goal is to help finance teams spend less time on manual processes and more time focusing on strategic growth.”

“Ozow is committed to delivering fast, secure, and reliable digital payment solutions for businesses across South Africa,” said Catherine Korsten, Chief Growth Officer at Ozow. “Our partnership with Duplo enables us to further extend our payment capabilities to businesses looking to optimise their collections, improve cash flow, and scale with confidence.”

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