Skip to content

Business finance

Invoice finance, asset finance and merchant advances

Invoice finance waits on your customer. Asset finance buys equipment. A merchant cash advance takes a share of card sales. None of them is a personal loan with a new name.

Reviewed 29 October 2026 by the WiT Money editorial team. This is general information, not a recommendation from a named adviser.

Key points

  • With recourse, you may repay the advance if your customer does not pay.
  • Confidential invoice discounting is not the same as telling the customer to pay the financier.
  • A merchant cash advance fee is not an interest rate. Do not convert a factor into an APR on this site.

Invoice finance pays you part of an invoice before your customer pays. Factoring often lets the customer know and may transfer the debt. Invoice discounting often leaves you collecting. Purchase-order finance funds a confirmed order before you have invoiced. If the facility is with recourse, a bad debt comes back to you.

Asset and equipment finance are tied to the bakkie, the machine or the fit-out. Miss the instalments and the asset can be taken. A merchant cash advance gives you a lump sum and collects a percentage of card turnover until a total, which is larger than the advance, has been paid. The extra is a fee. It is not quoted here as an annual rate, because the time it takes depends on sales.

A worked shape

An invoice of R100 000 with an 80% advance and a 2% fee is the shape of the invoice calculator: you might see R78 000 now and the rest if the customer pays. Change the numbers to the offer in front of you. A merchant advance of R50 000 that must repay R65 000 has a R15 000 fee. If card sales fall, the repayment takes longer. The calculator says that. It does not set the contract term.

Overdrafts

An overdraft on the business account is a limit, reviewed by the bank, often secured and often priced above the term-loan rate. It is for a short gap, not for a permanent hole. The comparison page describes the product. It does not publish a rate we have not checked.

Questions readers ask

Is invoice finance cheaper because there is no interest line?

Not automatically. Look at the fee, the holdback and what happens if the customer pays late or not at all.

Related

Sources

Page updated 29 October 2026. A source date is the day WiT Money checked that page, not a promise the institution has not changed it since.