In the event of a missed payment or debit order failure, DMC requires you to provide a new deduction date or make good on the outstanding amount. We may also use debit-order tracking to collect all or part of the overdue amount.

You can elect the date of the deduction and this will be confirmed with you when you make the payment arrangement. Should your date fall over a weekend or public holiday the deduction will be brought forward.

To prevent fraud and reduce invalid payment disputes, a new type of debit order called DebiCheck was introduced in South Africa. It is referred to as an authenticated debit order, as you, the customer, will need to electronically confirm or authenticate when choosing to pay your account via debit order. For more information, please visit www.debicheck.co.za.

For customers who agree to pay on debit order, DMC may be able to offer a flexible and affordable deal, including no further interest or fees, and a generous upfront discount. Payment via debit order is generally more cost effective and beneficial than any other traditional means, and thus enables us to offer a better deal.

Where your elected due date falls on a weekend or public holiday, we will adjust your deduction date to enable us to deduct your instalment on the last business day before your elected date.

When a credit provider (such as a bank, lender or retailer) does not receive payment on an account for a specific amount of time, they may decide to hand it over, or sell it, to an external company for collection. DMC is one such collection company, and is trusted by these credit providers to treat their customers fairly and resolve their debt.

DMC wants to resolve your debt fairly. Please contact us, and we will be happy to discuss your options. Alternatively, you can log in to DMC Online to see what discount is available on your account, and set up an easy payment arrangement. If DMC has purchased the debt, we are in a better position to offer you a favourable discount, which could save you a lot of money.

Cybertrac is DMC's field agent network. If we cannot reach you from our contact centre, we may request one of our field agents to arrange a visit at your convenience. The agent will discuss your debt with you and request you to sign the relevant paperwork for a suitable payment arrangement.

An outsourced debt is one which a credit provider (such as a bank, lender, municipality or retailer) has requested DMC to collect on its behalf. DMC does not own the debt, but can still offer a simple, fair and trusted way to resolve it.

In terms of the Debt Collectors Code of Conduct, we are permitted to contact you during the following hours: 6am to 9pm Monday to Saturday (including public holidays). Our online self-service platform DMCOnline is however available 24/7 for you to manage your own account in your own time.

Amendments to the NCA (National Credit Act) have been tabled for over-indebted consumers who earn less than R7,500 per month. The amendment allows for a structured approach to relief, starting with reductions in interest rates and allowing for various levels of debt write-offs in extreme cases. However, this amendment has not been signed into law for an extended period and it is unclear if and when this will happen.

A purchased debt is a debt which DMC has bought from a credit provider (such as a bank, lender or retailer). As the new owner of the debt, we are often in a better position to offer our customers a more flexible and affordable payment arrangement than the original credit provider.

DMC will have entered into an agreement with the original credit provider, either to take over its collections or to purchase certain of its debts. In such cases, only DMC will have current information relating to the outstanding debt and will ensure that payments are correctly and timeously allocated.

A credit bureau is an organisation that collects information about consumers' credit history (from the likes of banks and retailers) and makes that data available to credit providers to use in assessing credit applications. Examples of credit bureaus in South Africa include TransUnion, Experian, Compuscan and XDS.

If you have a judgement against your name, it means that a court has ordered that you must pay your debt to a particular creditor (such as a bank or retailer). To remove the judgement listing from your profile you have two options: (1) you need to get the judgement rescinded through a court process or (2) you need to repay the debt in full, in which case, the credit provider must instruct the bureaus to remove the listing.

It depends on whether DMC has purchased the debt, or if we are collecting on behalf of another company. If your outstanding debt has been handed over to DMC to collect, the principal owner of your debt has to update your credit profile. If DMC owns the debt, we will submit a request to the relevant credit bureau to update your credit profile. Please note that updates can take up to 30 days to reflect on the credit bureau.

You can check your credit record with a credit bureau, like Experian, which will give you a report on the status of your debt and will let you know if you have any judgments against your name.

Blacklisting means that you have adverse information recorded on your profile, for example slow payer, not contactable, handed over, etc. Credit providers must take certain steps, including notifying you, before they can submit such information to the bureaus. Note however that DMC will never submit any adverse information and we only submit the information prescribed by the National Credit Act, which is mainly outstanding balance, installment amounts, and payments received.

No, even if an account is fully paid up, it will still reflect on your profile at the credit bureau, but it will reflect a positive status of paid up and will contribute to an improved credit score.

The National Credit Act requires all credit providers to submit details of the accounts and payment details to the credit bureau. This information is then made available to credit providers to use in assessing the risk and checking affordability on new credit applications.

As a registered credit provider, we are legally obliged to submit, in a prescribed format, certain information in relation to all consumers with whom we have a credit agreement, including those accounts we have purchased from other credit providers.

A credit score is a calculation that ranks credit risk by using various variables. Examples of typical variables used in credit include the number of missed payments in the last x months, the number of new credit applications in the last x months, the number of accounts in arrears, etc. Generally, the credit bureaus each have their own version of a credit score, and most credit providers will build their own scorecard unique to their business.