From the ground up How FMCG retailers and wholesalers can build the foundations of their businesses

Picture a small independent grocery store in Diepsloot. Until fairly recently, the owner, who has been trading for over a decade, could not access a single rand of formal business credit. He employs eight people and turns over a solid revenue every month but he has no conventional credit score, no fixed property to offer as collateral and no bank manager who knows his name. He is not a bad credit risk; he is simply invisible to the traditional financial system.

This scenario is common across South Africa’s retail and wholesale landscape, from spaza shops to mid-sized FMCG operations. It points to both a long-stand ing market failure and, increasingly, an opportunity that the sector is moving swiftly to address. Fintech innovation, new insurance pro ducts and AI-driven technology platforms are reshaping the financial and insurance infrastructure available to all formats of FMCG retailers and wholesalers, and their customers.

Smart financing

In 2026, the most forward-looking retailers and whole salers are not just managing their finances better, they are becoming part of the financial system itself. In the process, the role of stores is being redefined, from trading as pure merchants to becoming financial access points for the communities they serve. For retailers everywhere, liquidity is a constant preoccu pation. Stock replenishment, payroll, rent, energy costs, security – the demands on working capital are relentless, and the timing of cash inflows rarely lines up neatly with outflows. Getting the financing strategy right means finding the right kind of money for the right moment.

Karen Keylock, National Retail Franchi sing Manager at Nedbank Commer cial Banking, identifies a range of instruments that retailers and wholesalers should be working with. “These include overdrafts, trade finance, invoice discounting, asset-based lending, term loans and merchant cash advances. Each serves a unique purpose, from facilitating stock purchases to financing technology upgrades.”

The key is to match the funding type to the business cycle, not to default to whichever product is most familiar. Among these, invoice discounting is one of the more underused tools available to qualifying retailers. By converting unpaid invoices into im mediate working capital, businesses can maintain cash flow stability between wholesale deliveries and payment cycles.

This is particularly useful in the period after a seasonal peak, when revenue has slowed but stock obligations remain. Merchant cash advances offer a different kind of flexibility: repayments fluctuate with card sales volume, which means the facility naturally eases off during lean trading periods without the retailer having to renegotiate terms. The funding landscape is also broadening. A new generation of fintech lenders is introducing more flexible, modular solutions for inventory finance, receivables finance and supplier finance – often without requiring traditional collateral.

The store as a bank

One of the most consequential shifts in the current market is the blurring of the boundary between retailer and financial service provider. Retailers have long offered value-added services such as airtime and utility payments, but the ambition has grown considerably, as has the infrastructure to support it. A recent example is Shoprite’s acquisition of a majority stake in R&A Cellular), announced in March 2026 and subject to regulatory approval.

R&A Cellular operates a widely used POS platform that enables informal retailers – spaza shops, small independents, and community merchants – to offer prepaid airtime, electricity, gaming products and card-based payment acceptance. Shoprite’s move positions its Money Market financial services ecosystem to reach deep into townships and peri-urban areas through the informal trading hubs that millions of South Africans use daily.

👉Click here to view the full feature

Whatsapp