The WhatsApp business OS.

Track income, expenses, invoices, inventory and taxes through a WhatsApp message. Built for SA’s 1.6 million informal businesses (FinScope MSME 2024). Works in English, isiZulu and isiXhosa. Live in pilot since April 2026, onboarding merchants across Gauteng and the Western Cape. Built end-to-end, with 1,200+ tests passing. Pre-seed.

Free forever plan60-second setupSARS tax prepPOPIA compliantNo app download

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02 · What it does§ 02

Six things. All in WhatsApp. Nothing to download.

Track money & tax

Log income, expenses, invoices and inventory by typing or saying it. SARS-aligned categories. Turnover Tax–ready (R600K tax-free / R2.3M ceiling, effective 1 April 2026).

Natural-language logging

English, isiZulu, isiXhosa. “Ngithengise izinkwa ezintathu ngama-rand angama-45.” Logged. Same message in English: “Sold 3 loaves of bread for 45 rand.”

Receipt OCR

Send a photo of a supplier receipt, even a faded, handwritten one. Imali reads the line items, tax and totals and books them.

Summaries & PDF reports

Friday afternoon: where you stand, in plain English. A monthly PDF for the books, the bank, or a lender.

Rand-first, SADC-ready

Ships in rand for South Africa. Under the hood the platform already handles 21 currencies with daily ECB rates. Ready to cross borders when we are, not a multi-country product today.

Designed for credit

Six months of records produces a profile a lender can read. That credit-signal layer is built, designed to turn cash businesses into creditworthy ones, but no loan has been originated yet and no lender is signed.

03 · In the merchant’s hand§ 03

04 · The detail

Pricing

R0 free forever · R29 Starter · R99 Premium

Stage

Live pilot since April 2026, onboarding merchants across Gauteng and the Western Cape. Pre-seed.

Compliance

POPIA-first · FICA · NCA s70 framing on the lending API · SARS-aligned categories · TLS 1.3 in transit · AES-256 at rest

Under the hood

GPT-4o-mini for natural-language parsing, Vision OCR for receipts; FastAPI + Postgres on the WhatsApp Cloud API. Supports 21 currencies; ships rand-only today.

Site

imali.ebstar.co

Read the round →What else we build →

05 · The one-pager§ 05

The whole product on one page. Tap to view full size.

06 · Questions§ 06

What is Imali?

Imali is a WhatsApp business OS for South Africa's informal merchants. It handles bookkeeping, invoices, inventory and SARS tax prep through a WhatsApp message, in English, isiZulu and isiXhosa — no app to download.

How much does Imali cost?

There is a free plan (R0), a Starter plan at R29/month, and a Premium plan at R99/month.

Which countries and currencies does Imali support?

Imali ships as a South Africa, rand-only product. The platform handles 21 currencies under the hood (SADC-ready, with daily ECB rates), but it is not a multi-country product today.

Is Imali available now?

Yes — it's a live pilot, onboarding merchants across Gauteng and the Western Cape since April 2026. The company is raising pre-seed.

Does Imali give out loans?

Not yet. Imali is designed to turn cash businesses into creditworthy ones, and the credit-signal layer is built, but no loan has been originated and no lender is signed.