E-Business
Zoho to Make Zoho Invoice Free of Charge to Empower SMEs to Rebuild and Grow

Zoho Corporation, a global technology company, announced that starting today, its online invoicing solution, Zoho Invoice, will be completely free of cost to further extend the company’s support for small and medium-sized enterprises.

Andrew Bourne, Zoho’s Regional Manager, Africa
In the last four years, Zoho Invoice’s revenue growth has rapidly increased, demonstrating the need for a comprehensive invoicing solution to aid businesses from any industry to shift from manual to digital. Due to the pandemic, SMEs have decided to modernize their invoicing processes at an accelerated rate.
To continue its support of the SME community, Zoho Invoice offers advanced capabilities such as time tracking, auto recording of expenses, project billing, and 30+ real time reports to help freelancers and small businesses easily navigate the billing and payment collection process, without the concerns of cost.
According to a PwC survey in Nigeria, SMEs contribute to 48% of national GDP, account 96% of businesses and 84% of employment. According to the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, SMEs in Nigeria have contributed about 48% of the national GDP in the last five years.
For small and medium-sized enterprises billing and payment collection has continued to be a challenge due to administrative costs, limited staff, and insufficient time resources. Additionally, businesses need the ability to access data remotely, which has caused a shift from on-premise solutions to cloud-based solutions.
According to an Analysys Mason study, SME spending on on-premise solutions for invoice management will be stagnant between 2019 and 2025, while spending on cloud-based invoicing solutions will increase from USD 0.9 billion to USD 2.1 billion. Fully cloud-based, Zoho Invoice enables businesses to create and send fully-customized, professional invoices in less than a minute, follow up for payments automatically, and get paid online to achieve efficiency in their invoice process.
Zoho has supported SMEs for over 20 years, and Zoho Invoice has helped businesses with their invoicing needs for 13 of those years. Zoho Invoice’s free offering will continue to help businesses streamline their billing and payment collection process through streamlined payment collection, simplified billing, tax handling, and more. Invoice integrates with Zoho applications, and also integrates with third-party applications so that businesses can use the solution to contextually sync their AR information to relevant systems.
“We launched Zoho Invoice in 2008, with the goal of providing a fully customizable invoicing solution for businesses of all sizes. Since then we’ve grown to millions of users worldwide.
“Through the migration from paper-based invoicing to digital invoicing we’ve seen the need for simplified billing to fit the customized needs of the SME community,” said Andrew Bourne, Regional Manager, Africa.
“Our roots are centered around helping the SME community which has supported Zoho from the beginning, and we understand the challenges that SME’s have had to undergo that were onset from the global pandemic.
“We hope offering Zoho Invoice for free continues to help businesses rebuild and grow amongst challenging times that they face today and for the future.”
Key benefits of Zoho Invoice include:
- Simplified billing: Businesses can create and send fully customized, professional invoices within minutes. Invoices can be sent automatically if they are recurring in nature.
- Tax Handling: Businesses can track the tax levied on every transaction with tax summary reports to assist with tax filing.
- Streamlined payment collection: Payments can be collected quickly and securely online through Debit/Credit Cards and PayPal.
- Automated payment reminders: Based on customizable settings, the system will automatically send payment reminders to customers through email.
- Effortless expense tracking: Expenses can be recorded automatically by scanning the bill or receipt using the Zoho Invoice mobile app.
- Client portal: Businesses can allow their customers to keep track of all relevant invoices, projects and make payments through the client portal.
- Time tracking: Businesses can manage multiple projects, track time and accurately bill their customers.
- Instant reports: Businesses have access to 30+, real-time reports that provide insights into key financial metrics such as best-selling products, invoice statuses, pending payments, and more.
- Mobile apps: Zoho Invoice is available on the web or as a fully functional, downloadable mobile app available for all devices.
Availability
Zoho Invoice is available for free immediately on the web and as a fully functional, downloadable mobile app on all devices.
E-Business
UK Orders Apple to Create Backdoor for Encrypted iCloud Data

United Kingdom has issued a “technical capability notice” to Apple, mandating that the company create a backdoor to access users’ encrypted iCloud data.
This directive, issued under the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, requires Apple to provide British security officials with the means to retrieve all content uploaded to iCloud by any user worldwide.
Apple’s Advanced Data Protection (ADP) feature, introduced in 2022, offers end-to-end encryption for iCloud data, ensuring that only users can access their information.
The UK’s demand challenges this security measure, potentially compelling Apple to either comply by creating the backdoor or withdraw the ADP feature from the UK market.
Compliance could set a precedent, leading other governments to request similar access, thereby raising global privacy concerns.
The UK Home Office has declined to confirm or deny the existence of such notices, stating, “We do not comment on operational matters, including, for example, confirming or denying the existence of any such notices.”
This development underscores the ongoing tension between governmental surveillance efforts and technology companies’ commitments to user privacy.
E-Business
Oracle Adds AI Pricing Features to Financial Software

Oracle on Thursday added another set of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to NetSuite, one of its corporate finance software offerings, including some that might make it faster for consumers to get a price quote on purchases like custom bicycles.
Oracle has taken a different tack with AI than rivals such as Microsoft. Rather than racing toward general purpose virtual assistants, Oracle has decided to add targeted features that speed common-but-tedious tasks like entering a brief write-up of how a sales meeting went into a corporate records system.
Another such task that is common in the business world is giving a customer a price quote on a complicated purchase that might have a lot of options, when a sales professional would need to sift through materials to come up with a price.
NetSuite on Thursday announced a feature to compile such a quote via conversation with a chatbot asking what the customer wants, which can either be used by sales professionals behind the scenes to speed up their work, or directly by consumers in the case of e-commerce businesses.
“When you buy something like a bicycle, you have to configure it – figure out what parts you want and which parts work together. We all do it when we buy our cars on the web these days,” Evan Goldberg, executive vice president of Oracle NetSuite, said.
“If you can configure (products) for customers more easily, you can do more deals in a day, or each deal costs less.”
To power those features, Oracle has decided to skip the costly race to develop huge AI models and instead works with partners such as Canadian startup Cohere.
Goldberg said that Oracle’s recent agreement to build massive data centers with ChatGPT creator OpenAI could lead to working with it as well, though the two firms have made no formal announcements.
“I think you could safely say that there’s a possibility that OpenAI will be part of this,” Goldberg told Reuters. “We are eager to work with OpenAI.”
E-Business
IBM Exits Nigeria and Ghana, Transfers Operations to MIBB

IBM, the American multinational technology giant, has reportedly announced plans to exit Nigeria, Ghana, and other key African markets, transferring its regional operations to MIBB, a subsidiary of the Midis Group.
The move, which according to TechCabal was revealed in a statement by the company, effective April 1 2025, is part of a new operating model IBM is adopting across select African countries.
Under this arrangement, MIBB will take over IBM’s local operations, customer support, and relationships while marketing and selling IBM products and services across 36 African nations.
“MIBB will market and sell IBM products and services in 36 African countries, thereby giving MIBB’s sales network direct access to IBM products, services, and support, further boosting innovation and growth in the region,” IBM stated.
IBM has been a key player in Africa’s tech industry for decades, providing critical infrastructure for banking, telecom, oil and gas, and government services.
However, its planned exit follows a trend of multinational corporations leaving Nigeria.
In December 2024, Swiss cement giant Holcim announced its departure from Nigeria, selling its 83% stake in Lafarge to a Chinese firm.
Similarly, South African grocery retailer Pick n Pay disclosed plans in October 2024 to exit Nigeria by selling its 51% stake in a joint venture.
IBM has yet to respond to media inquiries regarding the specifics of its transition strategy and reasons for the exit.
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