Check where you qualify
Before you hand anyone six months of bank statements, find out which routes are actually open to you.
What this is. A comparison against the minimum criteria South African business lenders publish, grouped by type of lender. It is a guide to where an application is worth making — not a credit decision, not an offer, and not a guarantee that any lender will approve you.
Lenders change their criteria, and every one of them weighs your bank statements, credit record and affordability on top of these minimums. Showing as likely here means it is worth placing, nothing more.
And what it might cost
Short-term business finance in South Africa is usually priced as a flat monthly fee on the original amount. Here is roughly what that looks like in rands.
What moves the price
Who is paying you
The strongest driver by far. A national department and a small private buyer are priced completely differently, because the funder is really lending against them.
How long the money is out
Cost accrues over the funding period. An order delivered in three weeks and paid in thirty days costs a fraction of one that runs six months.
Your gross margin
Under about 20% there is little room for the cost of funding. Above 30% the deal carries it comfortably and more funders will compete for it.
Whether you have done it before
A repeat order for a buyer you have delivered to prices better than a first contract in a new sector.
An illustration, not a quote
How the numbers tend to work
Invented figures, to show the shape of a deal. Your actual cost comes from the funder in writing, and you see it before you commit to anything.
- Order you have been awarded
- R500,000
- What it costs you to deliver
- R375,000
- Your gross margin
- R125,000 · 25%
- Funded by the facility
- R375,000
- Cost of the finance
- a share of the margin
- What you keep
- the rest of it
Most tender and purchase-order funding in South Africa is priced either as a fee on the amount advanced or as a share of the profit on the deal, settled when your client pays. There is no published rate card anywhere in this market — including ours — because the price genuinely depends on the four things on the left. What we will not do is let you find out the number only after you have committed.
Worth placing?
Send us the detail and we will tell you where it is going to land.