Value that Pezesha Merchant Financing brings to the Merchant
A Merchant in Pezesha’s value chain is a micro or small business owner (kiosks/dukas/”mom and pop” shops) who experiences cash flow issues on a daily basis and would be able to grow their businesses if they could purchase more inventory on credit. These businesses have been cash constrained limiting their growth and business potential to expand their products and services.
They end up turning to unfavorable financing options such as shylocks and digital lending platforms charging them exorbitant fees, in the end defaulting to the place of cash flow issues as all their profits go back to paying expensive loans.
According to a report conducted by Trade Finance in Africa over 2011–2019, the average size of the trade finance gap in Africa was estimated to be US$91bn. It decreased slowly from US$120bn in 2011 to US$70bn at the end of 2016. However, it has since increased, with the latest data putting it around US$81bn. Also, the number of SME trade finance applications rejected by banks has increased by 20% from 2013 to 2019. This has negatively impacted merchants as they take the biggest blow in periods of slow business, with little to no working capital.
Moreover, the outbreak of Covid-19 has left Africa facing the prospect of its first recession in 25 years, with countries struggling with political instability, natural calamities and unpredictable weather pattern most small businesses are geared for a rough period ahead. Angelica Adamski, director of the board at the Sweden-Africa Chamber of Commerce says. “Once trade restarts, buyers may face liquidity issues that delay payment to suppliers, which in turn, would then struggle to pay their own suppliers.” She insists on the need to put emphasis on covering working capital programs in Developing countries in Africa, as the disruption Covid-19 has created on the trade cycle is significant.
Pezesha has come to the rescue of merchants who are mostly excluded in the formal financial ladder because of their informal nature, lack of collateral and lack of digital records to derive their credit worthiness. Pezesha leverages alternative transactional data sets and empowers these merchants with digital tools to start building their credit history and access affordable short term inventory credit and long term working capital.
Pezesha’s merchant financing offering has enabled value in many ways including but not limited to;
1.Productivity: the credit provided by Pezesha is paid directly to the supplier to ensure its used for the right purpose of bridging merchant inventory needs. This allows them to fulfil their customers’ demands on time with running out of stock. In the end, enabling them to invest in customer retention and business growth. To boost merchants productivity we have further provided financial education to train them on digital tools on how to manage their sale and inventory in an efficient manner to also guide them on what products to stock to maximize their revenues.
Vincent, one of the Twiga Merchants we have enabled with access to credit, started with a bi-weekly order size of about 6,000 but has since grown to almost 20,000. He says, “Pezesha has given me an opportunity to scale my business in a way I never imagined. I have increased my customer base by 25% and my stock keeps growing everyday. At no point do I lack inventory because of cash shortage”
2. Low Total Cost of Capital: Pezesha has customized its loan products to the specificity of a merchant needs. Pezesha does not provide a one size fits all, but flexible loan products with flexible repayment terms from daily, weekly to monthly repayment options. Most of our merchants have testified that daily payments have significantly reduced the cost of credit and they can still realize profit margins in their sales. More so, as they pay on time, they get to grow up the Pezesha ladder that offers higher credit limits for overall business growth and assets.
3. Increases in sales and business growth: As Pezesha continued to enable access to affordable credit for inventory purposes, we continue to witness sales growth of an average of 10%-20% for the current merchants we have supported as now they can supply more goods and services to an increasing customer base.
Bonface Muriuki, one of the Jumia Merchants we have enabled with affordable credit, had this to say, ‘I wanted to meet orders that were about to be cancelled. The amount and terms I was offered by Pezesha was satisfactory to me. No order cancelation was done and I was able to increase my sales for that and subsequent periods’
4.Fewer instances of out-of-stock: One major contributor to lack of credibility and trust from customers is their inability to have their demands met as and when they want. Out of Stock instances can be embarrassing and can stifle the growth of small business owners since customers will more often than not walk away and look for alternatives. Pezesha’s digital lending infrastructure has enabled real time credit scoring and credit within seconds for the merchant to buy stock just in time.
We invite small merchants in our Pezesha merchant financing offering by writing to us at sme@pezesha.com and connect us with your suppliers so that we can enable credit to buy from them on credit and help you grow and prosper in your business growth and survival.