Meet the New Paylo: Five Apps, One Business, and Your Own Customers Free

Today we're launching the new Paylo. It's the biggest change we've made since we started: a lineup of apps that covers every part of running a store, and new pricing where sales to your own customers are free on every plan.

Here's what's new:

• Five apps, one business. Paylo Business for you, Paylo POS for the counter, Paylo Staff for your team, Paylo Dispatch for riders, and the Paylo app for your buyers. Everything they record lands in one place.
• Your own customers are free. Paylo only earns on buyers it brings you, and only for each buyer's first year.
• Escrow on every order in the Paylo app, so buyers who don't know you yet can pay you with confidence.
• Intelligence, next. Demand intelligence and Sentinel, our AI marketing assistant, are being built on what these apps record.

Why we rebuilt Paylo

Over the last two years, the kind of intelligence that used to belong to large companies, like forecasting demand, spotting what's about to sell out and knowing which customers will come back, became almost free. Anyone with a phone can ask an AI model a question that would have needed an analyst five years ago.

But AI can only work with what it can see. Big retailers get real value from it because every sale, delivery and stock count is already recorded by teams whose whole job is collecting that data. Most businesses here run on WhatsApp chats, a sales book and the owner's memory. Owners know their numbers. What's missing is a tool that records them as part of the work people already do.

Then there's the time it takes to get good at AI tools: knowing what to ask, how to describe your business so the answer is useful, and how to turn one good answer into something that happens every week. You're running a business all day. You shouldn't have to become an AI expert to benefit, and the tools should do that work for you.

So we built Paylo backwards. We looked at where commerce is most likely heading, took the best version of that future, and worked back to the present one step at a time. Imagine asking your phone for what you want. It finds one in stock two streets away, from a seller with a good record who delivers the same day, and pays for it safely.

That only works if the seller's stock, sales and deliveries are already recorded somewhere an assistant can see. So the path starts with your business, and a set of apps that sit where your work already happens and quietly capture what you already do.

Run the whole business from one place

Paylo Business is where you set up and run your store. It builds your storefront, from your Instagram page or website if you have one. It keeps one set of listings and prices that reach your storefront, the Paylo marketplace, your Instagram and WhatsApp catalogues and AI assistants at the same time.

Orders, payouts, customers and stock all live here, so you can see how the business is doing from anywhere, without being in the shop.

Know where your stock and your money are

Paylo POS sits at your counter and turns every walk-in sale into a record, whether the customer pays by card, transfer or cash. Stock stays in sync with everything else. That's the difference between a notebook that says what should be on the shelf and a system that notices when it isn't.

If you run the shop alone, Paylo Business has POS built in, so the phone by the counter can be your till.

Manage your staff without standing over them

Paylo Staff goes on the phones of the people who work in your store. A picker gets a list of online orders to fill and ticks them off as they go. A manager receives new stock, counts what's on the shelves and approves what needs approving, while you're somewhere else entirely.

Every action is tied to the person who took it, so you can see who did what and when.

Deliver the same day, with proof

Paylo Dispatch belongs to whichever rider makes the delivery. It records the handoff at both ends, with photos, so "I never received it" and "I delivered it" stop being one person's word against another's.

Sell safely to people who don't know you

Commerce here runs on who you know. A buyer with a plug, a seller they've trusted for years, is fine. A buyer without one pays the stranger price, gambles on a fake, or sends money to someone who disappears. And honest sellers lose buyers who can't tell them apart from scammers.

Buyers find your store in the Paylo app, and every order placed there is paid into escrow upfront. You know the money is secured, and the buyer knows it won't be released until the item arrives, with the rider's proof of delivery to back it up. Sellers sign public commitments about honest stock and genuine products, and their record follows them.

How everything fits together

Each app asks for one small thing. The cashier rings up a sale. The picker ticks off a list. The rider takes a photo. Because they all run on one backend, every one of those actions lands in Paylo Business, next to every sale, stock level and payout. Even a store that has never used a spreadsheet gets a complete picture of its business.

What that picture makes possible

Once your business is recorded, and buyers are searching and ordering on the same system, Paylo can see something no single store can: what people nearby want and can't find.

We call this demand intelligence, and it's what we're building next. Every search, wishlist and waitlist on the marketplace is a signal. When twelve people within a few kilometres of your shop ask for the same phone this week and nobody nearby has it in stock, you should know before your competitor does. When a product you sell is about to run out at the rate it's moving, you should hear about it while there's still time to restock.

Large companies pay analysts for this. On Paylo, you get it because your sales, your stock and your neighbourhood's demand already live in the same place.

Knowing what to stock is half of it. The other half is knowing how to sell it, without having to become an AI expert first.

Sentinel, coming soon, is our answer to that. It's an AI assistant that gives every store on Paylo the kind of marketing help a big retailer pays a team for. You don't have to know what to ask. Sentinel watches your sales, your stock and the demand in your area, and tells you what to promote, to whom and when. It drafts the post, picks the customers most likely to buy again, and turns what works into a routine that runs every week.

How Paylo charges

Your own customers are free, always. Paylo only earns when it does something you couldn't do alone, like bringing you a buyer who's never heard of you, and even then only for that buyer's first year. After that, they count as yours too.

Paid plans lower that fee and add the tools for stores with staff. Every order shows exactly what we took and why. Paylo pricing explained has the full breakdown.

Prices in Nigeria have more than doubled since 2021, and the naira has gone from around ₦400 to the dollar to around ₦1,400. Traders watch every cut taken from a sale more closely than ever. Paylo doesn't run a fleet or a warehouse, so it doesn't need to take a quarter of the sale to survive.

Where we are

Already live. Paylo Business, POS and Dispatch are live, and Paylo Staff is rolling out to our first stores. More than sixty verified businesses have joined and listed over 600 products. Escrowed orders have run end to end, from payment to delivery proof to release. Your catalogue already reaches buyers beyond your own followers: on your storefront, in your Instagram and WhatsApp catalogues, and inside AI assistants that connect to Paylo.

Happening now. Density. We're concentrating on clusters, tight areas where we can bring buyers, sellers, riders and local sourcers together and make the whole loop work end to end.

Next. Demand intelligence and Sentinel, built on the records the clusters produce. Then a buyer's assistant that can find the phone someone wants two streets away, check the seller's record and pay into escrow for them.

A trader in Banex should have the same quality of insight into their business as a supermarket chain, without hiring anyone, and be able to sell to a stranger as safely as to a friend. That's what we're building towards.

Get started

If you're a trader, download Paylo Business and set up your store. If you're a business owner, a rider or someone who has spent years being the plug for everyone you know, get in touch. This is being built for you, and it will be better for your input.