South Africa will open its payments system to non-bank operators, including telecoms firms, fintechs and retailers, from mid-2027, a central bank official said on Friday, as part of a major overhaul of the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The change would \u200bend banks’ longstanding dominance of South Africa’s payments processing market, allowing non-bank firms to \u200bconnect directly to the national payments infrastructure, which clears and settles payments nationwide, \u2060rather than relying on banks as intermediaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) hopes the reform will spur \u200bcompetition, lower costs, broaden access to digital financial services and encourage innovation in a sector increasingly \u200bchallenged by fintech companies and mobile-money providers such as MTN .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pradeep Maharaj, executive director of SARB’s Payments Ecosystem Modernisation (PEM) programme, told a media roundtable that rules governing payment activities and exemptions would be published by November. Non-bank participants \u200bare expected to go live around March 2027 following licensing, allowing time for testing and systems \u200bintegration ahead of a mid-year launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reform is a key pillar of the central bank’s PEM programme, which aims \u200cto \u2060reduce reliance on cash and accelerate the adoption of affordable digital payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SARB plans to modernise payment infrastructure, increase adoption of fast-payment services like PayShap and strengthen security and digital identity verification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maharaj said the changes should lower transaction costs for small businesses and consumers and reduce cash dependency, while giving \u200bunbanked and underserved consumers \u200bwider access to digital \u2060payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As part of the wider modernisation effort, SARB has also proposed creating a national cash utility, a central bank-owned cash handling company, and introducing “white-label” \u200bATMs operated as shared infrastructure rather than by individual banks, in a \u200bbid to lower \u2060cash-handling costs and preserve access to cash, particularly in rural and underserved areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maharaj said SARB expects to migrate its cash centres into the new cash utility in 2027 and begin incorporating industry-owned centres, which \u2060will \u200bbe bought by the utility, by the end of next \u200byear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He added that a white-label ATM pilot would be launched in January, with the first batch of machines set to \u200bbe rolled out nationwide by the end of next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa will open its payments system to non-bank operators, including telecoms firms, fintechs and retailers, from mid-2027, a central bank official said on Friday, as part of a major overhaul of the system. The change would \u200bend banks’ longstanding dominance of South Africa’s payments processing market, allowing non-bank firms to \u200bconnect directly to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,244,21],"tags":[7,245,22],"class_list":{"0":"post-41480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-featured","8":"category-finance","9":"category-technology","10":"tag-apie-project","11":"tag-finance","12":"tag-technology"},"yoast_head":"\n