The fintech is consolidating its merchant data operations to provide FMCG brands, wholesalers and other organisations with transaction-level visibility into spaza shops and taverns
Finance PlanningSecondary HeroBankingFintechSouth AfricaAfricaTechAfricanBusiness
Redação Portal ERP
Aug 20, 2026
T|Fonte:18px
2min read
Lesaka Technologies, a fintech company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, is consolidating its merchant businesses under the Lesaka Merchant Division and has renamed Kazang Insights as Lesaka Data & Insights. The business was formed through Lesaka’s 2024 acquisition of Touchsides from Heineken International and provides data and analytics services to companies operating in South Africa’s informal retail market.
The operation draws data from a point-of-sale network covering more than 90,000 spaza shops and taverns, with 10,500 checkouts. The network generates millions of transactions each month, providing information on stockkeeping unit-level sales, basket composition, selling prices, stock availability, geographic trends and promotion performance.
For companies selling into the informal retail sector, the data is intended to provide a more current view of purchasing activity than surveys, periodic sampling and historical datasets. Lesaka Data & Insights combines research, data science and analytics to examine market activity and identify patterns related to pricing, product distribution, promotions and marketing investment.
“Brands seeking to understand South Africa’s informal retail economy have traditionally relied on surveys, samples and historical data,” says Roland Naidoo, Chief Operating Officer of Lesaka’s Merchant Division. “These approaches can be expensive and often struggle to keep pace with a fast-moving market where consumer behaviour, pricing and product availability change at a rapid pace. Our goal is to give companies real-time, grassroots visibility into how South Africa’s informal economy actually shops.”
The company also plans to develop models through which participating spaza shops and taverns can share in the value generated by the insights business. Lesaka sees the data operation as part of its broader work with informal merchants, alongside technology and payment services.
Its roadmap includes adding payments data from Lesaka’s merchant terminals and information from GAAP, a point-of-sale and software-as-a-service provider serving Southern Africa’s hospitality sector that is also owned by Lesaka. The combined datasets are expected to provide clients with a broader view of consumer purchasing behaviour across the markets covered by the businesses.
“The informal economy remains one of the least understood parts of the consumer landscape, despite its size and importance,” says Naidoo. “Our vision is to transform millions of real transactions into intelligence that helps businesses make faster and more informed decisions. The data we have access to, along with our accumulated experience in the informal sector, means we are uniquely able to shed light on purchasing behaviour and changing consumer demand in this market.”
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