For many small and informal businesses across South Africa, access to funding remains a challenge despite active trading.
Traditional lending models often rely on financial statements, complex applications and fixed repayment structures that do not always reflect how small businesses operate day to day.
FNB is addressing this challenge by using transaction data from card payments to better understand how businesses trade and to support access to working capital through FNB Cash Advance.
As businesses begin accepting card payments, their trading activity becomes visible through recorded transactions. This visibility provides insight into trading behaviour, settlement timing and cash flow patterns, allowing funding decisions to be informed by actual trading activity rather than paperwork alone.
“Many informal businesses are financially active but structurally invisible,” said John Mlangeni, FNB Merchant Services CEO. “When a business starts accepting card payments, its trading becomes visible, and that visibility is what opens the door to funding.”
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Through FNB Cash Advance, eligible merchants can access working capital based on their transaction history processed through SpeedPoint devices. Repayments are structured as a portion of daily card sales, aligning repayment with trading activity rather than fixed monthly debit orders.
Since its launch, 65% of FNB Cash Advance payouts have been under R100,000, while 31% have gone to businesses with annual turnover below R1 million, reflecting the relevance of the product for smaller enterprises.
FNB Cash Advance is integrated into the broader SpeedPoint ecosystem, where payment devices are positioned as business tools that provide visibility into sales and cash flow while connecting merchants to additional services within the FNB Business ecosystem.
With sufficient transaction history, funding offers can be pre‑approved, reducing the need for manual applications or additional documentation. The importance of transaction‑led funding is underscored by the scale of South Africa’s township and informal economies, which are estimated to contribute approximately R750 billion annually to the national economy.
At the same time, payment behaviour is shifting, with around 47% of SME incoming funds now coming from card payments, alongside continued use of cash and other payment methods.
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By linking access to funding with card-based trading activity, FNB Cash Advance reflects a data‑led approach to SME funding that aligns finance more closely with how businesses already operate.
As digital payments continue to form a growing part of everyday trade, funding models such as FNB Cash Advance offer a more accessible and manageable alternative for small and informal businesses to access working capital.