16 Sep 2021

Voucher website passes $250,000 in transactions supporting small business

2:54 pm on 16 September 2021

The not-for-profit voucher website SOS Business is seeing a surge in demand from people wanting to support small businesses during lockdown.

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Photo: 123RF

The website was set up when the country first went into lockdown last year, to help keep businesses afloat by allowing customers to buy vouchers that could be cashed-in later.

It was handed over to American investor, inKind, last year.

SOS founder David Downs, who is still involved with the organisation, said people were still eager to support small businesses with vouchers.

"Since the beginning of lockdown, I think we've now passed about $250,000 in those transactions. When you think about the average size is about $10, it's a lot of transactions.

"And then we have worked with some partners and others to throw in another $50,000 as well, so we're probably at around the $300,000 mark. All of that money is going out the door to small businesses," he said.

Downs said SOS had about 2500 businesses registered.

He said in many instances, businesses were helping other businesses stay afloat.

"Some of them aren't that large. [For example] an electrician bought some vouchers for his customers to say thank you. We had a university buy them for their staff.

"It's a great way to thank people who are working from home, who are feeling a little bit forgotten and at the same time helping businesses in real time."

Downs also said teaming up with inKind had opened up avenues to take the SOS Business platform overseas.

"We hooked up with six different other similar initiatives around the world, a couple of them in Australia, one in the United Kingdom and one in Estonia.

"In Israel, we gave them our whole template and everything and they translated it into Hebrew ... it's actually been really cool."