Buy now, pay later is a lovely business right up until the moment customers stop paying. Weaver Fintech, the JSE-listed group that owns South Africa's biggest buy-now-pay-later platform PayJustNow and the HomeChoice retail brand, learned that the hard way in the first half of 2026. Revenue grew a healthy 10% to R2.8 billion in the six months to the end of June, but headline earnings still slipped about 9% to R272 million as bad debts bit.
Bad debts and a payments glitch
The pressure came from lending. Debtor costs, the money set aside for loans that may never be repaid, surged 62% to just over R1 billion, and the group's credit loss ratio climbed to almost 25% from 21%. On top of that, Weaver hit technical problems with DebiCheck, the system that asks customers to approve debit orders with their banks: some files were not processed on time, which made paying customers look like they had defaulted. Chief executive Sean Wibberley says those payment issues have since been resolved. In response, Weaver skipped its interim dividend to preserve cash and tightened who it lends to, cutting its targeted approval rate from 81.4% to 75.8%, shortening the average loan term, and slowing new lending from 15% growth in the first quarter to 6% in the second.
The fintech engine still runs
For all the credit pain, the core is growing. The fintech division lifted revenue 30%, grew fee income 43%, and now accounts for 94% of the group's trading profit. Customer numbers rose 17% to 5.1 million, and PayJustNow has passed a million downloads on Google Play to cement its place as the country's number-one buy-now-pay-later app. The group says it has R1.1 billion of cash and unused facilities to lean on, and is planning a soft launch of a PayJustNow Mobile airtime and data service with Cell C to reward good customer behaviour.
Wibberley expects the second half to stay strained for consumers, with transport and food costs squeezing spending, but points to early signs that credit is turning, including July arrears measures improving 13%. For a lender built on lending more, the real test is whether tighter rules can protect profit without choking the growth.
