Freedom251 › Ecommerce platforms
Mercado
What Mercado is
Mercado is a hosted commerce operating system for Africa, available through a web service and API. It combines storefront, ledger, inventory, and payments for omnichannel sales. Its WhatsApp parser reads order items, checks stock, quotes a price, creates a journal entry, and sends a Paystack payment link. Inventory supports multiple locations, automatic transfers, low-stock alerts, reservations, and audit trails for each movement. Accounting includes double-entry records, automatic sales journals, and month-end entries to Retained Earnings. Payment integrations listed are Paystack, Flutterwave, Stripe, bank transfer, cash, and mobile money, with split settlement, partial refunds, and automatic reconciliation. Developer tools include REST, SSE, webhooks, TypeScript, Python, Go SDKs, a Next.js theme SDK, and sandbox mode. Starter is free; Growth is $15,000 a month and Scale is $75,000 a month, with naira billing notes.
Who it suits
Mercado suits African businesses managing omnichannel sales, inventory, payments, and accounting. Its developer and enterprise options also target teams needing APIs, controlled hosting, or multi-location operations.
What it does well
- WhatsApp order parsing
- Double-entry accounting
- Inventory for up to 50 locations
- Multiple payment integrations
- REST, SDK, webhook, and sandbox tools
What to know first
- Growth costs $15,000 a month
- Scale costs $75,000 a month
- Public pricing is still in development
- Platform transaction fee applies
Plans
| Plan | Billed and limits | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Growth | from ₦15,000/mo · Storefront · Loyalty · Promotions · Multi-channel · Auto-bookkeeping | $15,000 a month |
| Scale | from ₦75,000/branch/mo · 2–50 locations · Multi-terminal SSE · Per-branch P&L · Audit · RBAC | $75,000 a month |
| Starter | free forever · 1 chat thread · WhatsApp · POS · Receipts · Inventory | Free |
| Enterprise | contact sales · BYOC · AWS · SSO/SAML · White-label · Custom SLA · NDPR & GDPR · Dedicated CSM | On request |
As mercado.africa lists them, read 20 Oct 2026. The maker's own page has the final word.
Verdict
Mercado brings commerce, accounting, inventory, and payments into one hosted service, with developer tooling and enterprise deployment choices. Its free Starter tier provides a starting point, while paid tiers and transaction fees require budget planning.
Facts from Mercado's own pages
- Accounting
- The product uses double-entry accounting, posts journal entries for sales and closes revenue and expenses into Retained Earnings. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- AI analytics
- Mercado advertises SKU and branch demand forecasts, cash-flow anomaly detection, payment fraud scoring and reorder suggestions. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- API
- A REST API is offered at api.mercado.africa with order creation, inventory reservation, payment-link return and journal posting. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- App marketplace
- Yes · mercado.africa, 21 Sept 2026
- Cloud ownership model
- Morphlix says its ventures run on AWS and that the studio handles architecture, operations and FinOps. · morphlix.com, 20 Oct 2026
- Company legal name
- The site footer identifies the maker as Mercado Commerce, Inc. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Company locations
- The footer lists Lagos, Nairobi and Accra, while the product site presents those cities as operating markets. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Company status
- Morphlix labels Mercado “In build” and says it is actively being developed inside the studio. · morphlix.com, 20 Oct 2026
- Compliance
- The site lists NDPR, PCI-DSS via certified processors, a GDPR EU data residency option, SOC 2 Type II in progress for Q3 2026, and an ISO 27001 audit starting Q2 2026. · mercado.africa, 12 Oct 2026
- Compliance roadmap
- The site says SOC 2 Type II is in progress for Q3 2026 and an ISO 27001 audit starts in Q2 2026. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Customer data
- Orders update customer profiles containing lifetime value, last visit, channel mix and segment membership. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Developer extensibility
- Developer capabilities listed are Server-Sent Events, webhooks, idempotency keys, event IDs, sandbox data and a Next.js theme SDK. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Developer tools
- The developer offering includes REST, SSE, webhooks, TypeScript, Python, and Go SDKs, plus a Next.js theme SDK and sandbox mode. · mercado.africa, 12 Oct 2026
- Documentation
- Mercado advertises live runnable API documentation with curl, TypeScript and Python examples, but no separate public help-center content was found. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Enterprise deployment
- Enterprise customers can deploy primary data in their AWS account, VPC, region, S3 bucket and KMS keys while Mercado runs orchestration. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Enterprise features
- Enterprise features listed include BYOC, SSO/SAML, white-label, custom SLA, NDPR and GDPR support, and a dedicated customer success manager. · mercado.africa, 12 Oct 2026
- Enterprise hosting
- Enterprise deployments can run in the customer's AWS account using its KMS keys and VPC; Mercado says it operates the control plane and does not copy customer data. · mercado.africa, 12 Oct 2026
- Free plan
- Yes · mercado.africa, 21 Sept 2026
- Hosting model
- hosted · mercado.africa, 21 Sept 2026
- Independent review availability
- The available third-party product page from Morphlix describes Mercado but provides no customer rating or review-count metric. · morphlix.com, 20 Oct 2026
- Integrations
- The site names Paystack, Flutterwave, Stripe, MTN MoMo, WhatsApp, Instagram catalogs, Okta, Azure AD and Google SSO/SAML. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Inventory
- Inventory supports multiple locations, automatic transfers, low-stock alerts, reservations and movement audits. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
- Inventory locations
- 50 · mercado.africa, 21 Sept 2026
- Launch promotion
- A code named MERCADO60 gives the first Growth month free when used before 31 December 2026. · mercado.africa, 20 Oct 2026
Where Mercado stands on Freedom251
- Ecommerce platforms#48 of 280