At 30 years old, Mbali Ncube is building more than a crochet brand – she is building confidence, resilience and opportunity in her community.
In 2024, Mbali launched Yarnflore, a handmade crochet fashion business born out of passion and persistence. This self-taught crochet artist learned her craft with YouTube tutorials, mastered it, and is turning yarn into wearable art.
As her creativity grew, her business faced a quiet barrier – cash-only payments.
The challenge: When cash limits growth
For a long time, Mbali only accepted cash. To her, it felt simple, but it also wasn’t always sustainable. Customers who preferred digital payments would walk away. Without offering other options like eWallet or CashSend, she lost potential sales. Managing physical cash also felt risky and difficult to track because, when in hand, it could easily be spent and was sometimes lost. Without a card machine, her business growth was capped.
Cash was convenient, until it wasn’t.
Her turning point: Going digital in Thembisa
Things changed when Mbali joined the community digitalisation project in Thembisa through FinMark Trust. At the Digital ke Power Financial and Digital Literacy Training, and through her participation in the cashless market, she learned how digital payments work, why they matter for small businesses, and how to use them safely and confidently. For the first time, digital tools felt accessible to her rather than intimidating.
The impact: More sales, less risk
Since she started accepting digital payments:
- Customers no longer need to rush off to find an ATM
- Transactions are quicker and easier
- She has stopped losing sales
- Handling money feels safer and more manageable.
Mbali says her biggest fear was not knowing how digital payments worked, but with the training and support she received, that fear disappeared. Today, she operates with confidence and has no major worries about going digital. What once felt uncertain now feels empowering.
What’s next?
For Mbali, the next step is simple. She wants digital payments to become normal for her customers. When more people choose to pay digitally, it makes her day easier. She does not have to worry about keeping cash safe, finding change, or losing a sale because someone needs to find an ATM first.
She also knows that the tools available to small businesses like hers can still improve. Affordable, easy-to-use digital payment options made specifically for micro-entrepreneurs would help her grow without adding pressure or high costs.
While she feels far more confident than when she started, Mbali appreciates ongoing financial and digital literacy support. As her business grows, she wants to keep learning to manage her money more effectively, serve her customers better, and continue building Yarnflore into something even bigger.
Her advice to other business owners
“Start using digital payments. It makes business easier, helps you attract more customers, and reduces the risk of handling cash. It has worked for me, and I believe it can work for others, too.”
