More than half of South Africans surveyed by DebtBusters this year spend at least 40% of their take-home pay on debt repayments. South African earned wage access platform Paymenow is now trying to sell employers a way to fix that, not just bridge the gap to payday.
The company launched SmartReset on 6 October 2026, a debt and financial reset programme delivered through employers. Paymenow says it serves more than 1 million employees across South Africa, Namibia, Zambia and Pakistan, and aims to help 10 million employees in those markets become debt-free by 2035.
Debt, insurance and savings
SmartReset works in 3 stages. It first checks an employee’s debts for reckless lending and prescribed debt, then builds a budget and a repayment plan for what remains. It then reviews whether the employee is paying for duplicate insurance cover, and whether existing cover is suitable and fairly priced.
Money freed up in the first two stages is moved into a savings account. Each employee works with an accredited financial coach, and Paymenow says it tracks participants after the reset to stop them falling back into debt. The service is free for both employees and employers.
“Millions of South Africans are under real financial pressure and have nowhere to turn. SmartReset identifies these employees, gets to the root of what is holding them back, and helps them recover,” said Deon Nobrega, CEO of Paymenow.
Simon Trupp, CEO of SmartReset, said earned wage access alone does not solve the underlying problem. “Helping someone reach month-end matters, but it does not clear the debt they are already carrying or repair the credit record shutting them out of affordable finance,” he said.
The pressure on borrowers
DebtBusters’ 2026 Money-Stress Tracker, which surveyed nearly 18,000 website subscribers in May and June, found that 72% were experiencing money stress, up from 70% in 2025. The sample is not representative of the population, but the trend matches the official data.
The National Credit Regulator’s Credit Bureau Monitor for the first quarter of 2025 counted 28.9 million credit-active consumers, of whom 10.4 million, or 36%, had impaired credit records. The South African Reserve Bank then raised the repo rate by 25 basis points to 7.25% on 23 September 2026, its second increase this year, pushing up repayments on variable-rate debt.
From wage access to debt rehabilitation
SmartReset builds on Paymenow’s merger with PayCurve earlier this year, which added debt rehabilitation, affordability assessments and money coaching to its wage-access product. Earned wage access has grown fastest among younger workers, with under-35s leading uptake in South Africa.
Paymenow says several large South African employers have already made SmartReset available to staff, but did not name them or say how many employees have enrolled. Those numbers will show whether the 2035 target is a plan or a slogan.
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