Digital Payments & Fintech - South Africa

The SARB regulates and oversees the National Payment System under the National Payment System Act 78 of 1998. The Act is bank-centric and is slated to be replaced by a forthcoming NPS Bill.

On 3 March 2025 SARB published a draft Exemption Notice and Directive creating an activity-based authorisation framework (modelled on the EU's PSD2) covering ~8 payment-service categories including e-money issuance, money remittance and merchant acquiring. Drafts were consulted on and revised; first non-bank payment-institution licences are expected from 2026 — so a dedicated regime is not yet in force.

Proposed licensees would hold activity-based minimum capital, segregate client funds in trust accounts at approved banks, maintain a 100% liquidity buffer against the e-money float, and would be barred from lending or investing customer balances; directors must meet fit-and-proper and AML/CFT obligations.

PayShap, South Africa's real-time low-value interbank rail, launched in March 2023 (under the BankservAfrica-operated Rapid Payments Programme), settles in seconds and processed over 100 million transactions in its first year, with per-transaction limits raised to R50,000.

There is no statutory open-banking mandate; data-sharing and payment initiation currently operate through commercial bank–TPPP (third-party payment provider) partnerships and bank-specific APIs such as Capitec Pay, rather than a regulated standard.

The FSCA declared crypto assets 'financial products' under the FAIS Act in 2022; CASP licensing opened 1 June 2023. By mid-December 2025 the FSCA had received 512 applications and approved roughly 300, while pursuing investigations against unlicensed operators. (Note: BNPL has no dedicated regime and is treated under the National Credit Act depending on structure.)