👨🏿‍🚀TechCabal Daily – Shoprite, pay right

Shoprite, the South African retailer, is already one of the most recognisable chain markets for weekend and last-minute shopping runs. What happens when it owns the payment rails that process transactions at local tills and spaza shops—smaller provision stores—in South Africa?

After aggressively scaling back, exiting markets such as Ghana and Malawi in 2025, and prioritising its home market, the retailer just bought a point-of-sale (PoS) business. Yes, your guess is as good as ours.

What happened? In its financial results released on Tuesday, the South African retailer reported that it has bought a 51% majority stake in R&A Cellular, which makes PoS devices from South Africa’s busy province of Mpumalanga. The value of the deal, which finalised on August 14, was not disclosed.

Why does this matter? Owning a critical payments infrastructure business could enable Shoprite to expand deeper into payments. Small businesses, an estimated 15,000, use R&A Cellular’s PoS devices in South Africa, where it is a prominent niche provider. 

Between the lines: While it does not compete directly with major mainstream enterprise PoS providers such as Lightspeed Commerce and GAAP POS in high-end formal retail, R&A Cellular commands a vital network within South Africa’s vast, cash-dominated informal retail sector.

What does this do for Shoprite? Two things. One, it could allow Shoprite to pay more attention to providing financial services to spaza shops through this acquisition. Second, Shoprite could integrate R&A Cellular’s PoS devices into its own ecosystem to control more of its payment flows. Remember what MultiChoice and Moment did?

Of course, R&A Cellular’s PoS devices would not be the only terminals at your local supermarkets. Customers need multiple points of failure in e-commerce; once you deny them those options, you risk frustrating and potentially losing them.

Zoom out: It’s a deal Shoprite will relish. Informal payments are growing steadily in South Africa; it grew 5.9% to reach R220 billion ($13.6 billion) in 2025, according to research firm Trade Intelligence, with fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) being a consequential contributor to that sector. 

E-commerce is often a precursor to fintech and payments, and naturally, Shoprite’s ambition is not out of place—or new: it has been distributing omnichannel PoS software since at least 2024. Competitors such as Woolworths and Pick n Pay have also moved deeper into payments and financial services, blurring the lines between retail and fintech.