Fintech & digital payments rules in South Africa (2026)

Following a FATF Plenary in Paris and an on-site verification visit in July 2025, South Africa was removed from enhanced monitoring after completing all 22 action items covering AML/CFT enforcement, beneficial-ownership transparency, and supervisory reform. Removal directly reduces due-diligence friction and correspondent-banking costs for digital-payments and fintech firms operating cross-border.

As part of the Payments Ecosystem Modernisation (PEM) programme, the SARB released two draft instruments opening direct National Payment System access to non-bank fintechs for the first time, proposing eight licensed payment-activity categories including e-money issuance, merchant acquiring, money remittances, and PayShap participation; the industry comment period closed in April 2025, with final rules expected Q3 2025 and first licences in early 2026.

The FSCA's cumulative CASP licensing update showed 248 approvals, nine refusals, and 106 voluntary withdrawals since the June 2023 window opened, marking the effective operationalisation of South Africa's crypto-asset conduct-supervision regime under FAIS.

Following the October 2022 crypto-asset declaration, the FSCA opened a six-month window (June–November 2023) requiring all crypto asset service providers to submit FSP licence applications; firms that applied retained an interim operating exemption, creating South Africa's first mandatory licensing regime for digital-asset intermediaries.

The SARB and BankServAfrica launched PayShap, South Africa's first instant interbank payment service using mobile-number aliases and a R3,000 transaction cap, initially through Absa, FNB, Nedbank, and Standard Bank; it forms the consumer-facing centrepiece of the NPS modernisation strategy and the key fast-payment rail open to future non-bank participants.

The Financial Action Task Force added South Africa to its grey list, citing material gaps in AML/CFT enforcement, beneficial-ownership registries, and asset recovery; the listing imposed enhanced due-diligence requirements on cross-border transactions and raised compliance costs for fintech firms dealing with international partners for over two years.

Published in Government Gazette 47334, the declaration formally classified crypto assets as 'financial products' under the FAIS Act, compelling all advisers and intermediaries in crypto assets to obtain FSP licences; miners, node operators, and NFT service providers were explicitly excluded, while the declaration directly addressed FATF-identified regulatory gaps.

The Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group released the first formal evaluation of its April 2020 sandbox, documenting cohort outcomes, regulatory learnings, and design improvements; the report established the evidence base for scaling the sandbox and refining South Africa's innovation-facilitation framework.

The Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group opened South Africa's first formal regulatory sandbox, admitting seven firms in its inaugural cohort under a six-month testing framework with participating lead regulators; it remains the primary safe-harbour pathway for fintech innovators testing novel digital-payment and financial-services models.

The Policy Paper on the Review of the National Payment System Act 78 of 1998 recommended shifting to an activity-based licensing model, enabling non-bank direct participation, and applying proportionate oversight — the intellectual blueprint for the 2025 PEM draft rules that arrived seven years later.

The Financial Sector Regulation Act 9 of 2017 became fully operational, replacing the Financial Services Board with the FSCA (market conduct) and creating the Prudential Authority within SARB (prudential soundness); this split-regulator model — alongside the co-founding of the IFWG — formed the institutional architecture within which all fintech and digital-payments licensing now operates.

SARB, National Treasury, FSCA (then FSB), and the Financial Intelligence Centre jointly founded the IFWG as South Africa's first coordinated, cross-regulator body for fintech policy; it subsequently launched the sandbox, issued crypto-asset position papers, and drove the regulatory responses that defined the next decade of digital-finance oversight.

The FAIS Act created the FSP licence — conduct standards and fit-and-proper requirements for financial advisers and intermediaries — which became the regulatory vehicle for licensing crypto asset service providers in 2022–2023; it remains the primary fintech conduct-licensing statute until the pending COFI Bill replaces it.

South Africa's cornerstone payments legislation granted the SARB authority to regulate, oversee, and supervise all payment, clearing, and settlement systems; it established the bank-centric NPS framework that has governed digital-payment participation for over 25 years and is the primary statute now being modernised by the PEM programme.