{"id":43868,"date":"2026-08-27T09:04:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=43868"},"modified":"2026-08-27T09:04:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T07:04:28","slug":"informal-borrowing-more-than-doubles-in-sa-study","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/informal-borrowing-more-than-doubles-in-sa-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Informal borrowing more than doubles in SA: Study"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>A new study released by South African (SA) short-term lender\u00a0Wonga, reveals that the number of SA borrowing from informal lenders is more than double the 15% recorded by\u00a0Wonga\u00a0in a similar survey in 2025.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The lender released its annual credit\u00a0utilisation\u00a0survey, with some sobering findings around how the cost-of-living crisis is increasingly forcing consumers to access dangerous, illegal lenders, often for daily essentials.<\/p>\n<p>SA&#8217;s cost-of-living crisis deepens, with rising reliance on credit driving nearly a third of SA citizens to borrow from informal lenders, often for household essentials.<\/p><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The findings are contained in Wonga&#8217;s annual credit utilisation survey.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The short-term lender surveyed 4 872 respondents from across the SA nation.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>They show a financially stretched population highly dependent on credit to get through the month, with 41% of respondents using credit every month for essentials like groceries, transport, and electricity.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13745,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-43868","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"Study reveals that the number of SA borrowing from informal lenders is more","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/43868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/43868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43870,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/43868\/revisions\/43870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=43868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}