The local e-commerce sector is booming, with total revenue projected to top R110bn this year and more than 40 million consumers now shopping online, according to Statista’s 2025 Ecommerce Outlook.
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But as thousands of new online sellers enter the market, the question is no longer how to grow; it’s how to cope.
One of the fastest-rising pain points is logistics. Across the country, retailers are buckling under the pressure of fulfilment bottlenecks, rising courier costs, and inconsistent delivery coverage.
Recent data from Business Unity South Africa shows that average cross-border transit times have increased by 20% in just one week, with the country losing an estimated R170m in indirect costs from delays alone.
Meanwhile, port congestion, equipment breakdowns and unpredictable weather continue to slow down container throughput at critical hubs like Durban and Cape Town.
It’s against this backdrop that Bob Go, a South African smart shipping platform, has reported 30% year-on-year revenue growth and over 1.9 million shipments processed in the first half of 2025.
A huge opportunity in e-commerce
The platform, which forms part of Bob, an integrated e-commerce and fintech company, is helping small and medium-sized merchants automate their order fulfilment, compare courier prices in real-time, and deliver more reliably, especially into difficult-to-reach or underserved areas.
“There’s a huge opportunity in e-commerce right now, but also a huge operational strain,” says Jaco Roux, head of product at Bob Go.
“We’re seeing SMEs go from a few dozen orders a week to hundreds a day, and without scalable logistics, they can’t keep up. The old way, manual bookings, single-courier setups, no tracking, doesn’t work anymore.”
Much of Bob Go’s success lies in its ability to give smaller players access to tools previously reserved for big retailers. Merchants can automate dispatch, get eight courier quotes for multiple service levels per order, and track parcels end-to-end, all through one interface.
This saves time, keeps costs in check, and dramatically improves the customer experience. From January to June this year, Bob Go signed up over 1,200 new merchant accounts, a 40% increase over the same period last year, and saw gross profit grow by 57%.
Retention is also strong, with 98 of the platform’s top 100 shippers from 2024 still active in 2025.
A new kind of South African seller
But the numbers only tell part of the story. What’s emerging is a new kind of South African seller: informal traders, DIY entrepreneurs, home-based creators, many of whom are running their businesses entirely through social platforms.
These users want simplicity, speed, and legitimacy. They want tools that enable them to deliver like the big guys, but without the big budgets. And they’re shaping the future of online retail in the process.
However, the logistics challenges they face are real. Many courier services don’t deliver to townships or rural areas. Fuel prices remain volatile. And the country’s infrastructure, from rail to port to border post, is under heavy strain.
In a recent Global Trade Magazine forecast, the global smart logistics market is expected to surpass $175bn by 2034, as retailers everywhere turn to tech-enabled supply chains. In South Africa, that shift isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity.
For small businesses navigating this environment, a few principles are proving critical: choosing fulfilment partners with national reach, automating wherever possible, having a plan for returns (now a legal requirement under the Consumer Protection Act), and communicating proactively with customers.
Bob Go is seeing clear evidence that businesses following this approach are scaling faster and more efficiently, often tripling their daily order volumes without needing to hire extra staff.
The next evolution, says Roux, is opening logistics to the public. Bob Go’s soon-to-launch consumer-facing app will allow individuals, not just merchants, to book courier shipments directly. The app will include locker-to-locker, door-to-locker, and door-to-door delivery options, and at some point in the future will offer the same multi-quote flexibility on door-to-door shipments that has proven popular among businesses.
“We want to simplify shipping for everyone,” says Roux. “Whether you’re running a store, sending a gift, or launching your side hustle, logistics should never be a barrier.”
As South Africa’s e-commerce economy grows in both size and complexity, the pressure is on to build smarter systems. The question isn’t whether online retail will thrive; it already is. The question is whether the infrastructure can keep up. And for many sellers, the answer lies in platforms that make fulfilment not just possible, but painless.
