South African financial wellness platform Paymenow has secured a ZAR250 million ($14m) debt facility from Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) to support its expansion plans.

The startup was founded in 2019 and enables employees to access a proportion of their earned wages before their payroll cycle ends without the need for costly loans. Paymenow also aims to improve financial wellness and promote savings.

The platform serves more than 200,000 workers in retail, mining, security, cleaning and facilities management industries. Paymenow is looking to double in size in the next year and will use the funding to expand into more jurisdictions, including Lesotho, Ghana and Kenya.

Paymenow was founded by Deon Nobrega alongside business development head Bryan Habana (a Rugby World Cup winner), technical director Willem van Zyl, head of software development Gerry Potgieter, and founder investor Garth Mackintosh. The startup aims to ease the burden inflicted by payday and microlenders through affordable, real-time, access to cash.

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“There is tremendous demand for Paymenow’s services in South Africa, which has 25 million active credit customers, of whom more than 10 million are behind on their payments. As such, the population of people looking for access to liquidity is enormous, and our ability to provide this liquidity without compromising financial health is having a remarkable positive impact,” said Nobrega. “Access to funding, such as through the agreement with RMB, is a gratifying acknowledgement of the strength of our model, and a key enabler of our future growth.”