In short
Almost anyone. South African law sets no qualification, exam, minimum capital or professional membership before you may lend. An individual, company, close corporation or trust can all be a lender. Where the National Credit Act requires registration, a short list of people cannot be registered: unrehabilitated insolvents, under-18s, anyone ever removed from a position of trust for fraud, and anyone imprisoned in the last ten years for listed dishonesty or violence offences without the option of a fine. The real limit is whose money you lend. Your own is free. Taking other people's money to lend on is reserved to registered banks.
Almost anyone. There is no qualification, no exam, no minimum capital and no professional body you must belong to before you may lend money in South Africa. An individual, a company, a close corporation or a trust can all be a lender.
What the law does is disqualify a small number of people, and require registration from most who lend. Beyond that the barrier is not legal. It is whether you can afford to be wrong.
01 — Who mayThe forms a lender can take
| Who is lending | Can they? | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| An individual | Yes | Simplest to set up. Your personal estate carries the risk, and the income is taxed in your hands. |
| A company or close corporation | Yes | Separates the lending from your personal estate. More administration, and its own tax treatment. |
| A trust | Yes | Common where the purpose is holding capital across generations. The trustees decide, not the beneficiaries. |
| A partnership or group of individuals | Yes, with care | Fine if each lends in their own name. If one person is holding the others' money, see the warning below. |
Which form suits you is a real decision with real consequences.
02 — Who may notThe people the law rules out
Where the National Credit Act requires registration, some people cannot be registered at all. A natural person is disqualified as a credit provider if they:
- are an unrehabilitated insolvent;
- are under 18;
- have ever been removed from a position of trust for misconduct involving fraud or taking money that was not theirs;
- have been convicted in the last ten years of theft, fraud, forgery, perjury or a corruption offence — or a violent crime — and were sent to prison without the option of a fine;
- are on the National Gambling Act register of excluded persons, or have been found mentally unfit by a court.
Two of those have no time limit at all. The word the Act uses is 'ever'. Someone removed from a position of trust for fraud twenty years ago is still disqualified today.
03 — The requirementMost lenders have to register
If you are the credit provider and the National Credit Act reaches your loan, you must register. Since 2016 the threshold has been R0, so this is triggered by a single loan rather than by building a book.
Both halves of that matter. You are the credit provider only if the agreement is in your name — someone who funds an administrator or a platform that lends is not, and the registration is that business’s. And whether the Act reaches the loan depends mostly on who is borrowing: lending to an individual is always covered, much lending to businesses is not. Both are worked through at do you need to register.
04 — The real limitWhose money may you lend?
So the honest version of the answer to this page's question is: anyone may be a lender with their own capital. Lending other people's money is a different activity with a different answer.
05 — The honest partAllowed to and equipped to are not the same
Everything above is about permission. None of it is about competence, and the law sets a floor rather than a standard.
Nothing in any statute requires you to:
- take security, or check that the security is worth what you were told;
- find out whether the borrower already owes money to other people;
- write down what happens if they stop paying;
- keep enough spare capital to survive one loan going wrong;
- know how long you have before the debt dies.
Every one of those is optional as a matter of law and close to compulsory as a matter of not losing your money. A lender who does all five is not more legal than one who does none. They are just far more likely to be repaid.
The question worth asking instead
Not am I allowed to do this — you almost certainly are. The better question is can I afford for this particular loan to go to zero. If the answer is no, the amount is wrong regardless of how lawful the arrangement is.
06 — The boundaryWhat this page does not decide
Whether you personally are disqualified, whether the Act reaches the loans you intend to make, and which lending form suits your circumstances are all questions of fact about you.
This page sets out the shape of the answer. The Regulator's register, and an attorney or accountant for the structure, are where the specifics come from.