What does factorage mean?
Factorage refers to the commission or fee earned by a factor — an agent entrusted with selling goods on behalf of a merchant or producer. In the age before modern banking, factors were indispensable middlemen: they stored consignments, found buyers, extended credit, and remitted proceeds to distant owners, taking factorage as their compensation, often calculated as a percentage of sales. By extension, the word can denote the business or occupation of a factor itself. The term carries a formal, somewhat archaic flavour today, surfacing chiefly in commercial law, maritime trade, and histories of commerce such as the cotton and tobacco economies of the Atlantic world. It derives from 'factor', ultimately from the Latin facere, 'to do or make' — a reminder that the factor was literally the person who 'does' business on another's behalf. Understanding factorage offers a window into how trade functioned long before electronic payments and global brokerage houses.
The commission or fee paid to a factor for transacting business or selling goods on another's behalf.
"The auction house charged a modest factorage on each lot it sold for out-of-town clients."
The business, agency, or occupation of a factor.
"His grandfather made his fortune in factorage along the Baltic grain routes."
This collective sense is rarer than the fee sense and appears mainly in historical writing.
Rarely pluralized since the fee sense is usually uncountable or treated as a mass noun; the plural appears only when referring to multiple distinct commissions or agencies.
"The ledgers recorded factorages owed across half a dozen trading ports."
Before banks dominated trade, merchants trusted 'factors' to sell their goods abroad — and factorage was the cut those agents took for the service.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of factorage
Factorage comes from 'factor', meaning a commercial agent, combined with the noun-forming suffix '-age'. The root is Latin facere ('to do, make'), whose agent noun factor means 'one who does or acts'. English borrowed 'factor' in the late Middle Ages from medieval Latin, likely via French, and factorage developed later as the term for the agent's commission, paralleling formations like brokerage and porterage. Related words sharing the same Latin root include factory, benefactor, and manufacture.
How factorage is actually used
Formal and largely historical or commercial in register; today it appears mostly in discussions of trade history, shipping law, and traditional mercantile practice rather than everyday speech.
Easily confused with factorage
Brokerage is the commission charged by a broker, whereas factorage specifically refers to the commission of a factor, an agent who takes possession of goods and sells them on another's behalf.