The commercial risk in exporting is not usually the freight. It is being paid — by a customer in another jurisdiction, where chasing a debt is impractical and the leverage you rely on at home does not exist.
The methods, from safest to riskiest
Payment in advance. Safest for you, hardest to sell. Common for first orders and smaller values, and reasonable to ask of a new buyer.
Letter of credit. The buyer's bank undertakes to pay against documents. Strong protection, and it costs money and demands precision — the documents must match the credit exactly or the undertaking falls away. Worth it on substantial orders to unfamiliar buyers.
Documents against payment. The buyer gets the documents needed to collect the goods only on paying. Cheaper than a credit and weaker: if they simply refuse, your goods are at a foreign port and your options are poor.
Open account. You ship and invoice, they pay later. Normal between established partners and the most exposed position there is for a new relationship.
Match the method to the relationship
The usual progression is advance payment or a credit for the first orders, moving towards open account as a track record builds. Starting at open account with an unknown buyer because they asked is how exporters lose consignments.
Where a buyer resists any protection at all on a first order, that is information.
Credit insurance
Export credit insurance covers non-payment, and it exists precisely because this risk is difficult to manage otherwise. There is public provision for it as well as commercial cover.
For a business whose first export order is a large share of its revenue, this is worth investigating before shipping rather than after.
Currency
A price agreed in another currency moves between agreement and payment, and on a long export cycle that movement can exceed your margin entirely.
You can price in rand and put the risk on the buyer, which is simplest and sometimes uncompetitive. Or price in their currency and hedge it — your bank's trade desk will explain forward cover, and for meaningful amounts it converts an unknown into a known.
What you should not do is price in foreign currency, leave it open, and hope.
Get the paperwork exactly right
Where payment depends on documents — as with a letter of credit — a discrepancy as small as a mismatched description can suspend the undertaking.
Check the requirements against your documents line by line before shipping, and have the bank or your clearing agent review them. This is not bureaucratic caution; it is the thing that determines whether you are paid.
Bring the money home properly
Exchange control requires proceeds to be received within a period and accounted for. Your bank handles the mechanics, but the obligation is yours — talk to them before the first shipment.
General guidance, not banking, trade or legal advice. Exchange control and trade finance are specialised; consult your bank and a licensed adviser.