M2North is an independent trading network. The organisations are named because they send purchase orders through M2North; M2North is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
M2North has connected suppliers to the retailers they sell to since 2001. Pick n Pay, Makro and Game started sending purchase orders through it in 2002, Shoprite Checkers in 2004 and Cashbuild in 2006, and they still do.
Built in a Johannesburg garage to solve one problem properly: suppliers should not need a new integration for every retailer.
1990
Ivan Jenkins and Justin Lawrence start IRJ (now IRJ.io), building systems for retail, logistics, customs and cross-border operations.
2000–2001
Clients keep asking for EDI work, and every integration is built one retailer at a time. So Ivan and Justin squeeze their client work into four twelve-hour days and spend the fifth, and many late nights, building an EDI switch in Ivan’s garage. The idea: one connection, every partner.
2001
After eighteen months, the switch goes live as M2North: a hub that suppliers connect to once, instead of building a link to each customer.
2002–2007
Pick n Pay, Makro and Game start sending purchase orders through M2North in 2002, Shoprite Checkers in 2004, Cashbuild in 2006 and Builders in 2007.
2016–2018
Boxer joins in 2016 and Leroy Merlin in 2018, and M2North grows from an EDI switch into supplier discovery, accounts payable automation and B2B commerce.
Today
More than 80,000 businesses are registered on M2North, more than 10,000 trade on it, and more than a million documents cross it every month.
Each of these sends purchase orders to its suppliers through M2North. The year is when it started.
Purchase orders, invoices, debit notes and remittances. Boxer joined in 2016.
Purchase orders, invoices, remittances and statements. Builders joined in 2007.
Purchase orders, delivery notes, invoices and debit notes, for Shoprite, Checkers and Usave.
Purchase orders, delivery notes, GRVs, invoices, remittances and statements.
Purchase orders, invoices and statements.
Beyond retail: purchase orders, delivery notes, invoices and statements, from one of South Africa’s platinum miners.
Most of what we know is about what happens between an order leaving one system and arriving, correctly, in another.
Shoprite Checkers sends a purchase order to the supplier through M2North.
M2North delivers it in the format the supplier’s system reads, whether that is SAP, Sage, SYSPRO, Xero, QuickBooks, Zoho or a browser.
The supplier sends its delivery note and invoice back from the same system, in the format Shoprite Checkers expects.
Debit notes come back the same way, so every document can be traced to the order it belongs to.
A retailer thinks in stores, orders and deliveries. A supplier thinks in sales orders, stock and accounts receivable. M2North works between the two.
Businesses rarely start with a clean sheet. We connect the ERP, the formats and the processes you already have, rather than asking you to change them.
When your next customer is already on M2North, the question changes from “how do we build another integration?” to “they are on M2North, let’s connect you.”
Software handles the routine orders and invoices. When a document fails or something unusual happens, you talk to someone who understands the transaction.
Co-Founder
Ivan wrote his first business software at 16, for the video store he worked in. He co-founded IRJ.io in 1990 and built M2North with Justin from 2000. Data, finance and business process are his ground.
Co-Founder
Justin took his first job with Ivan and never left. He co-founded IRJ.io and co-built the original M2North switch in Ivan’s garage. Today he leads Tyto, IRJ.io’s workspace for distributed teams.
General Manager
Brett runs M2North day to day, including the teams that connect suppliers to the network and support them once they are trading.
Retailers trust M2North with their orders. Independent assessors check how we protect them.
IRJ Software (Pty) Ltd, trading as M2North.com, is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 under certificate ZA10649E.
M2North scored 809 out of 1000 in its 2026 CyberVadis cybersecurity assessment.
Ivan Jenkins and Justin Lawrence. They ran a technology consultancy in Johannesburg from 1990, built M2North in Ivan’s garage from 2000, and launched it in 2001. Ivan still leads M2North; Justin now leads Tyto, IRJ.io’s other product.
Pick n Pay, Makro and Game have sent purchase orders to their suppliers through M2North since 2002, Shoprite Checkers since 2004, Cashbuild since 2006 and Builders since 2007.
Shoprite Checkers has sent purchase orders to its suppliers through M2North since 2004. Suppliers connect to M2North once, from their ERP or a browser, to receive Shoprite, Checkers and Usave orders and send delivery notes and invoices back.
SAP, Sage, SYSPRO, Xero, QuickBooks, Zoho and many other ERP and accounting systems, as well as a browser for businesses without one.
M2North is part of IRJ.io, the company Ivan Jenkins and Justin Lawrence founded. It is operated by IRJ Software (Pty) Ltd in South Africa and IRJ.IO LTD in the United Kingdom.
Whether you need your first Shoprite Checkers order in a browser or your ERP connected to several retailers at once, talk to people who have done it for 25 years.