A spaza shop is an informal store, people set them up in their homes, or garages or even hire out parts of their homes like an old garage or structure on their property for shop owners.

Because public transport is so bad, these spaza shops offer you access to certain goods and services in walking distance of people. They can sell just about anything it really depends on the neighborhood, because they can get pretty big, but most of them are a network of independent stores that do buying from wholesalers sometimes on their own, some do it in groups, if they all service a large enough location

They used to be cash-only businesses, but as of late, some of them are starting to accept card payments