An increasing number of South Africans are embracing PayShap, South Africa’s first interbank, interoperable, real-time payments service, which experienced strong growth in its first year, in line with the service’s fast-expanding community of participating banks and new users.
Promoting instant, convenient, easy and safe payments within the transaction limit of R3 000, BankservAfrica’s PayShap data shows there were over 14 million transactions, with a settlement value in excess of R9 billion, in the period between 13 March 2023 to 29 February 2024.
Over 2.5 million users have opted into using a ShapID identifier, such a mobile phone number, in order to remove the need to know the beneficiary’s bank account details.
“As a direct response to the South African Reserve Bank’s Vision 2025 to improve financial deepening by building trust and familiarity with electronic payments, PayShap is fast becoming recognised as a trusted digital peer-to-peer payment solution in less than a year,” says Stephen Linnell, CEO of BankservAfrica.
Initially launching with Absa, First National Bank, Nedbank and Standard Bank, the community has grown with Capitec, Discovery Bank, Investec, Sasfin and Tymebank coming onboard during 2023.
“We’re looking forward to welcoming the tenth member, African Bank, very shortly,” says Linnell.
As the Scheme Operator and Manager for the PayShap service, BankservAfrica is preparing for the exciting months ahead for the service’s evolution. This includes a critical new feature, Request-to-Pay (RtP).
“To be introduced later this year, RtP will open the PayShap service to small business owners and merchants for the real-time, digital purchase of goods and services,” ends Linnell. “More on this, including the enablement of QR Code based acceptance mechanisms, will be shared soon.”
