Where PayShap Stands
We support the modernisation roadmap that PayInc and the SARB's Payments Ecosystem Modernisation programme are delivering, and we recognise the progress PayShap has made since launch
14
banks live on the rail
5.8M
registered ShapIDs
R486bn
in payments during 2025
THE ADOPTION GAP
PayShap has grown, and the gap to card remains wide.
The SARB's own assessment is that PayShap has underperformed against its inclusion objective: adoption has been slower than expected, and PayShap has mainly displaced RTC and EFT transactions without materially reducing cash usage. The scale gap is visible in the SARB's figures
Transactions per year, SARB figures
Card at point of sale
2024
6 billion
PayShap
2025
507 million
PayShap remains an order of magnitude below card, and well below the trajectory required to displace cash at scale.
The SARB has already named the barriers.
Participating banks apply varying limits that cause failures and rejections.
Auto-registration is enabled by some banks and not others.
Pricing is opaque and marketing inconsistent.
These are coordination failures, and voluntary industry processes have had three years to resolve them. Only broad and consistent full-feature participation, together with participation by non-bank payment providers, will deliver the exponential change the PEM programme's Red Dot objective demands.
Two
Recommendations
Two decisions the SARB can take that serve its own objectives and the PEM programme.
1
Mandate participation in PayShap.
The SARB should mandate participation by institutions meeting objective scale criteria: large banks and, where appropriate under the future regulatory framework, qualifying authorised non-bank payment providers, with a proportionate transition path for smaller institutions.
Full-feature implementation should be secured through scheme requirements: send and receive, proxy registration and auto-enrolment, PayShap Request, QR acceptance once launched, consistent limits, and all channels.
The purpose is critical mass. Card issuers earn interchange of 0.36% to 2.45% per transaction, so no institution has a strong incentive to lead migration to a lower-cost rail, while the returns of a successful PayShap accrue to the whole system. A mandate resolves that collective action problem. The industry exchanges a share of per-transaction card revenue for a substantially larger digital payments market.
mandated participants
The Central Bank of Brazil requires institutions with more than 500 000 active accounts to join. The mandate created the critical mass. Fintechs and smaller banks then joined by choice and built out the market.
THE PRECEDENT : PIX, BRAZIL
35
843
voluntary participants, December 2024
+0.5% of GDP
the SARB's estimate of what digital payments can add, through deposits that fund lending, richer transaction data, and lower unit costs at higher volumes.
2
Put PayShap inside the card.
PayShap acceptance should be delivered through, and co-badged with, South Africa's existing card infrastructure, on both sides of the transaction. The consumer uses the interface they already know, the merchant uses the device they already own, and the transaction routes over the appropriate rail.
Co-badged card
the card the customer already carries
Existing terminal or QR
routes each transaction to the lowest-cost appropriate rail
Card rails
PayShap rail
Rail choice becomes a routing decision, and rails compete on cost and functionality for volume any acceptance point can carry.
South Africa has already built the acceptance infrastructure.
768 000
point-of-sale terminals
74M
cards issued
75%
of consumers use contactless
88%
of adults hold a bank account
A separate PayShap acceptance network built from zero would duplicate this footprint at material cost, and ask consumers and merchants to change ingrained behaviour before the rail could reach scale. Co-badging removes both barriers. Least-cost routing gives acquirers an alternative at the moment of each transaction, and the Reserve Bank of Australia reports that routing competition between dual-badge debit networks has lowered wholesale fees.
Implementation
The PayShap credential
Co-badging should be implemented through a PayShap-specific credential readable by existing POS infrastructure, so the terminal estate serves as the front end without the international schemes providing the underlying processing. The technical workstream should validate this architecture.
A common brand
Implementation should occur under a common PayShap brand, supported by SARB- and industry-driven communication campaigns, so consumers and merchants encounter one consistent proposition rather than fragmented bank-by-bank marketing.
Broad access
Participation should be open to appropriately authorised providers, bank or non-bank, that meet the regulatory, technical, and risk requirements, with proportionate barriers to entry, so that innovation occurs over common infrastructure.
Terminal-ready standards
Merchant implementation standards should be QR+-native and cover merchant identification, confirmations, reconciliation, refunds, reversals, and disputes, so certified card devices accept PayShap without separate integration.
Sandbox validation
The rapid-payment sandbox should include non-bank PSPs, system operators, acquirers, and fintechs, test the complete transaction lifecycle, and set measurable speed requirements at the point of sale.
Together, the two recommendations serve the objectives ASAPP was formed to pursue.
