Starting a side hustle sounds romantic until you actually price it up. Cameras, ingredients, a decent laptop, the website hosting nobody warned you about, the license fee that appears out of nowhere. The dream of a second income stream collides pretty quickly with the dull reality that most ventures need a few thousand rand of kit before they earn a single cent back.
That gap, between ambition and the bank balance, is where short term credit has quietly become one of the most-used tools in the modern hustler’s arsenal. Particularly in South Africa, which is currently one of the fastest growing side hustle markets on the planet.
How fast? The 2025 Old Mutual Savings & Investment Monitor found that 57% of working South Africans now earn from more than one source, climbing to 75% among 18 to 29 year olds [source]. That is not a fringe trend, that is the labour market quietly reshaping itself. And every one of those second income streams started somewhere, usually with a small upfront cost the founder didn’t have lying around.
Why credit, and why short term?
Traditional small business funding in South Africa is, frankly, a slog. Banks want trading history, collateral, registered entities, sometimes a finance background. The student selling press-on nails between lectures is not getting a meeting at the bank, never mind a loan. Neither is the security guard who wants R3,000 worth of cleaning equipment to launch a weekend service.
So they look elsewhere. A survey of over six thousand South Africans conducted by short term online lender Wonga [source] revealed something telling about how these ventures actually get funded. Over 20% of respondents used some form of credit or loan to get going. A further 13% borrowed from a friend or family member. That is roughly a third of all hustlers leaning on borrowed money to bridge the start up gap, a figure I’d argue is probably under-reported when you factor in the people who quietly stick the cost on a credit card and don’t think of it as ‘a loan.’
The appeal of short term credit specifically is the math of small ventures. If you need R4,000 for a printer, decent paper stock and some basic supplies to launch a personalized stationery business, you don’t need a five year loan. You need three to six months, you need it now, and you need to know exactly what you’ll repay. Long term debt instruments are designed for buying houses, not buying ring lights.
The discipline question
Here is where I’ll be blunt, because the writing rules say I should be. Credit is a tool, not a magic wand. I’ve watched friends torch perfectly good side hustle ideas by borrowing too much, too early, before they had a single paying customer. Buying the equipment is the easy part. Selling the thing the equipment makes? That is where most people quit.
The smart hustlers I know all do roughly the same thing. They start scrappy, they sell first and buy later, and when they do borrow, they borrow against an order they already have rather than an order they hope to get. A baker with three confirmed wedding cake bookings borrowing for a commercial mixer is making a different decision to a baker borrowing for the same mixer because they ‘might’ start taking orders.
Wonga’s own data backs this up incidentally, the same survey found 48% of side hustlers rely on the income their venture provides. That is income, not turnover. Big difference. The ones who get there generally got there by treating the start up loan as fuel rather than fireworks.
What to actually check before you borrow
A few non-negotiables, in no particular order. Confirm the lender is registered with the National Credit Regulator. Read the total cost of credit, not just the monthly figure. Match the loan term to how quickly the hustle will start producing income, not to how long you’d ‘like’ to take repaying it. And if a lender doesn’t credit check you, run.
The side hustle economy isn’t going anywhere, the numbers are too compelling. But the difference between the hustlers who build something real and the ones who end up worse off than when they started often comes down to how cleanly they handle that first chunk of borrowed money. Get that right and the printer pays for itself. Get it wrong and you’ve just bought yourself an expensive paperweight.