Like having an accountant
in your WhatsApp.
Log your money by voice or photo, send professional invoices, chase what you're owed, and get a ready-to-file tax return — all in the WhatsApp chat you already use. No app to download, and Imali never touches your cash. Proven first in South Africa, now live in Botswana, Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
This month · Imali
R24,180
✅ Logged R1,240— “Sold 6 crates”
One chat. Everything.
R · ₦ · KSh · P · $
Proven first in South Africa. Now available across five countries.
One WhatsApp number, available in South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe, in three languages — the same accountant-in-your-pocket wherever you trade.
0M+
Informal & micro enterprises in Southern Africa
~18–22M across SADC (World Bank / national surveys) — ~1.7M in South Africa. Market size, not users.
0
Languages shipped
English · isiZulu · isiXhosa
<0s
Onboarding, end-to-end
From first WhatsApp message to first logged transaction
R0/mo
Unit cost per merchant
At MVP scale. Margin-positive from day one.
POPIA-first
Explicit consent before any data is stored
Tax-aligned
Categories map to your country's tax schedule
Encrypted in transit & at rest
TLS 1.3 · AES-256
Meta Cloud API
Official WhatsApp Business integration
Running today on
Lending and insurance partners, including South African and regional insurers and banks, are in active conversations and will be named on launch.
One WhatsApp bot. Every kind of hustle.
From the spaza on the corner to the kasi kitchen on a Saturday — Imali is tuned for Africa's informal commerce. Proven first in South Africa, now live in Botswana, Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Street vendor
Fresh produce
Sold 6 crates 🍅
✅ Logged R1,240 · best day yet
This month
R12,400
Illustrative figures.
Street vendor · Imali
R12,400
Everything your business needs. In one chat.
No app to install, no dashboard to learn. The tools that used to mean a shoebox of receipts and an accountant you couldn't afford — now they all live in a WhatsApp thread.
Money
Log income and expenses in seconds — and fix or delete any entry if you get it wrong.
Voice & receipts
Log by typing, a voice note, or a photo of a receipt — Imali reads it for you.
Invoices & quotes
Create, send or email branded invoices and quotes — edit, cancel, add a pay link, or repeat monthly.
Credit book
Track who owes you, open any customer's statement, and send a tap-to-pay reminder.
Stock
Track what's on the shelf, see each item's movement history, and get a nudge before you run out.
Online store
A page customers order from on WhatsApp — style it, add a description, choose what shows.
Goals
Set a monthly revenue goal and watch your progress toward it as you log.
Payroll
Record what you pay workers and hand them a clean payslip PDF.
Team
Give a helper their own access — a manager who logs and manages, or a viewer who only sees reports.
Tax
Estimates that match your country — plus a prepared return and accountant pack.
Credit profile
Six months of activity builds a credit profile that opens real capital.
Reports
A clean monthly PDF of your whole business, auto-emailed to you.
A complete business toolkit, inside a chat
No downloads. No logins. No learning curve. WhatsApp messages that replace your admin clerk, your till system and your accountant.
Speak your numbers. Imali listens.
Type naturally in English, isiZulu or isiXhosa. Imali parses it, categorises it, and updates your books in under a second.
- Natural-language income & expense logging
- Receipt OCR that handles faded thermal paper
- Auto-categorisation aligned to your tax categories
- Works in any currency — R, ₦, KSh, P, $
R650 from Mrs Dlamini
09:12
✅ Logged R650 as income
March total: R18,420
R120 airtime
09:13
📱 R120· Airtime & data
Business expense · Category: Communications
From “never” to “every day”
in four steps
No downloads. No logins. No spreadsheets. Just WhatsApp messages that compound into a real business picture.
Message Imali
Save our WhatsApp number and send your business name. Imali greets you in your language and sets up your books in under 60 seconds.
Track everything
Income, expenses, invoices, stock. All logged with plain-language messages or a receipt photo. Imali keeps it clean and categorised.
Get insights
Weekly summaries, monthly PDF reports, and tax returns ready to file. Imali coaches you with cash-flow tips when it matters.
Grow capital
After 6 months of records, your credit profile is ready for African lenders. Informal business, formal funding.
Your money's private by design.
Financial data from Africa's informal economy is personal. Here's exactly how we handle it — the technical controls, not the marketing slogans. Imali never holds your funds, and your records are yours to delete anytime.
Read our privacy notice
POPIA-first by design
Explicit consent before any data is stored. Right to erasure honoured within 72 hours.
Read the privacy policyEncrypted, end-to-end
TLS 1.3 in transit. AES-256 at rest. HMAC-SHA256 signature verification on every inbound WhatsApp message.
SARS-aligned categories
In South Africa, expense categories map directly to SARS schedules — generate a TT03 Turnover Tax return straight from WhatsApp.
TermsPOPIA-compliant data flows
Backend on Render (Virginia), Postgres on Neon, language understanding on OpenAI, cache on Upstash — all in the USA under POPIA §72(1)(a) specific consent + §72(1)(b) contractual necessity. Full residency table on the privacy page.
See where the data livesPII minimisation
Phone number held in clear text only where we must (to message you back); analytics warehouse holds a salted hash. Log lines mask the number to last 4 digits. Bank account: last 4 digits only.
K-anonymity on aggregates
Any partner-facing aggregate query requires ≥50 merchants before a result is returned. No individual merchant can be re-identified.
Imali is not a financial services provider and never holds your funds. A third-party security audit is planned for Q2 pre-launch; once complete we'll publish the scope & findings here.
Six months of Imali = your first credit profile.
Most of Africa's informal merchants are invisible to lenders. No bank statements, no formal books. Imali fixes that. Every transaction you log quietly builds a credit signal. When you're ready, you opt in and vetted lenders can score you. No more cash-based lockout.
- ✓You opt in.Nothing reaches a lender unless you tap “Share with lenders” in WhatsApp.
- ✓Never raw data. Lenders see a score and aggregates (revenue trend, consistency). Never your customers, products, or phone number.
- ✓We don't sell data. No data brokers, ever. Read the privacy policy.
6mo
to credit-ready
Opaque
merchant IDs only
3+
African lenders in talks
Credit signal
Merchant 7F3A2B
Risk tier
A-
Low default risk
Monthly revenue
R24,180
Consistency
91%
Months active
8
Trend
+18% MoM
Choose your plan. Start free.
Start free on WhatsApp. Pick your country for local pricing — Imali is calibrated to each market, not a raw FX conversion. Upgrade through your Ebenworks account (secure checkout by Stripe). Cancel anytime.
Free
Everything a new trader needs
- 20 transactions / month
- Monthly PDF report (on-demand)
- Receipt OCR
- Credit book (who owes you)
- Instant CSV export
- 3 languages (EN / ZU / XH)
Starter
For businesses that are growing
- Unlimited transactions
- Weekly WhatsApp summaries
- Invoices, quotes & recurring
- Pay-online links + overdue tracking
- Priority WhatsApp support
- Everything in Free
Premium
Full business toolkit
- Tax estimate (e.g. SARS turnover tax)
- Live inventory + low-stock alerts
- Online store + payroll & payslips
- Multi-user teams (up to 3)
- Stokvel management
- Everything in Starter
Business
Your AI accountant
- Prepared tax returns (TT03) as PDF
- Year-end accountant handoff pack
- VAT-ready invoicing
- For registered / registering SMEs
- Everything in Premium
What happens at 20 transactions on Free? Imali sends a friendly WhatsApp reply: “Limit reached, upgrade to keep logging.” No hard lockout — your next transaction is held until you upgrade or the month resets.
How do I upgrade? Tap a paid plan to check out securely through your Ebenworks account — pay by card or EFT, processed by Stripe in your local currency (Ebenworks Systems (Pvt) Ltd is our merchant of record). Access switches on within seconds, and you still run everything from WhatsApp.
How Imali compares to what you have today
Works on a feature phone
- Imali
- Excel / paper
- Accountant
- POS system
No app to download
- Imali
- Excel / paper
- Accountant
- POS system
Logs in isiZulu / isiXhosa
- Imali
- Excel / paper
- Accountant
- POS system
Receipt OCR included
- Imali
- Excel / paper
- Accountant
- POS system
Tax-return prep (e.g. SARS TT03)
- Imali
- Excel / paper
- Accountant
- POS system
Builds credit profile
- Imali
- Excel / paper
- Accountant
- POS system
Monthly cost
- Imali
- From free
- Excel / paper
- Free
- Accountant
- 10–50× more
- POS system
- 5–15× more
Setup time
- Imali
- 60 seconds
- Excel / paper
- Hours
- Accountant
- Weeks
- POS system
- Days
| Feature | Recommended Imali | Excel / paper | Accountant | POS system |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works on a feature phone | ||||
| No app to download | ||||
| Logs in isiZulu / isiXhosa | ||||
| Receipt OCR included | ||||
| Tax-return prep (e.g. SARS TT03) | ||||
| Builds credit profile | ||||
| Monthly cost | From free | Free | 10–50× more | 5–15× more |
| Setup time | 60 seconds | Hours | Weeks | Days |
The problems Imali solves, in plain language.
Composite scenarios from pilot interviews with informal merchants across the five countries Imali runs in. Named testimonials will be added as pilot participants opt in to share their stories.
Spaza-shop owner
Soweto, South Africa
Before
A notebook behind the counter. No idea what the month actually made.
With Imali
Types “R200 sold bread” on WhatsApp. At month-end, one message shows the total. No app. No login.
Food vendor
Lagos, Nigeria
Before
Paper receipts in a shoebox. No way to prove income when applying for credit.
With Imali
Snaps a photo of each receipt. Imali reads the ₦ amount, files it, and builds a PDF report the lender actually accepts.
Hair-salon owner
Nairobi, Kenya
Before
Tax season meant panic, a shoebox, and a weekend lost to an accountant.
With Imali
Three staff log services from their own phones. The tax return is prepared automatically. Tax season is a non-event.
These are illustrative scenarios distilled from merchant interviews, not individual endorsements. We'll replace them with named, opt-in testimonials as the pilot rolls out.
Questions, answered.
Can't find what you're looking for? Message us on WhatsApp. We usually reply within the hour.
Imali never holds your money. Not one cent. It only tracks it. Your cash stays with you, in your bank, or in your till. All we store are the records you logged yourself: encrypted, POPIA-compliant, and yours to delete anytime.
Never without your explicit opt-in. The credit profile shared with lending partners is anonymised behind an opaque merchant ID, and aggregate FMCG insights require a 50-merchant minimum (k-anonymity). You’re never personally identifiable to any partner unless you say yes. We don’t sell data to brokers, ever.
Anytime, instantly, free — on every plan. Say “export my data” on WhatsApp and Imali sends your complete transaction history as a CSV file right in the chat, or download it from the web dashboard. Your records belong to you, not to us. Some record-keeping apps have shut down and locked owners out of their own data; we built export-first so that can never happen to you.
POPIA gives you the right to delete your data. Reply “stop” (or “delete my data”) on WhatsApp and we erase everything within 72 hours, except records your tax authority legally requires us to keep (financial records, typically about 5 years). Reply “export” first and Imali sends your complete ledger as a CSV instantly, or “nudges off” to stop the weekly reminders without cancelling.
No. Imali works entirely inside WhatsApp, the app you already have. Save our number, send a message, and you’re set up in under a minute.
Yes, forever. The Free plan includes 20 transactions a month, receipt OCR, the credit book, on-demand monthly PDF reports, a full CSV export, and three languages. Paid tiers add more: Starter (R29/mo in South Africa) unlocks unlimited transactions, invoices and auto-emailed reports; Premium (R99/mo) adds tax estimates, inventory, the online store, teams and payroll; and Business (R299/mo) is your AI accountant — prepared tax returns and a year-end accountant handoff pack. Local pricing applies in Botswana, Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe — see pricing above. Upgrade only if you outgrow Free, straight from WhatsApp.
South Africa's Turnover Tax is tax-free up to R600,000 a year and open to businesses with turnover up to R2.3M (the April-2026 expansion) — so most SA informal businesses qualify. Imali tracks your annual turnover live, alerts you when you approach the next bracket, and generates your TT03 return PDF at year-end. In Botswana, Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe, Imali estimates tax using each country's own system — including Nigeria's new 1% presumptive tax for informal businesses (2026) and Kenya's monthly Turnover Tax, where your report shows the exact TOT figure to file with KRA each month. You still file with your local tax authority — we just make it painless.
On the Premium plan (starting at R99/mo in South Africa, local pricing elsewhere) you can invite up to 3 team members. Each has their own role (Owner, Manager, Viewer) with clear permissions. You see every transaction; a manager sees only theirs.
English, isiZulu and isiXhosa today. Afrikaans is in review. We’re prioritising languages spoken in Africa’s informal economy over “lingua franca” alternatives — starting with South Africa’s official languages.
Still have questions?
Chat to Imali directly — no forms, no waiting on hold.
Join the merchants taking control of their money.
Join merchants across five African countries who track every sale through WhatsApp. No app. No credit card. Just your first message — and you're building a formal financial profile.