When a payment arrives within seconds, customers rarely think about what happens behind the scenes of the transaction. But South Africa is rebuilding that hidden machinery, changing both the rules for who can participate in payments and the infrastructure used to move money.
At a Standard Bank roundtable in Johannesburg on Wednesday, three payments executives outlined how new regulations, richer payment data, and faster cross-border rails are reshaping the industry.
A proposed activity-based regulatory model could give non-banks and fintechs more room to offer payment services directly, while initiatives in real-time cross-border payments and new payment standards are changing how those transactions are processed.
For fintechs, that creates more room to compete and a higher bar. Greater access will come with requirements around licensing, fraud controls, resilience, compliance, and data. That was the central theme of Standard Bank’s “Navigating the Evolving Payments Landscape” roundtable.
“The South African payments industry is experiencing the most significant regulatory transformation,” said Lesego Chauke, chief payments officer at Pay Inc., South Africa’s new national payments operator. “The question for organisations such as banks, corporates and fintechs is no longer whether the change is happening. It’s whether you are ready to benefit from it.”
The regulatory reset could be one of the biggest changes for fintechs.
The Payments Association of South Africa (PASA), the country’s payments industry body, has lost its recognition under a directive from the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), reshaping the institutional structure of the payments system. Card and high-value clearing have moved to the SARB, while low-value clearing has shifted to Pay Inc., the country’s new designated national payments utility.
For Chauke, the institutional changes form part of a wider modernisation of South Africa’s National Payment System. “With every major change in payment regulation, two things are created: a new obligation and new opportunities,” she stated.
Nthabiseng Mohale, Standard Bank’s head of interbank and domestic payments, added that the proposed authorisation framework would move away from regulating companies based on their institutional identity. “We move away from regulation based on the type of entity and towards regulation based on the activity being performed,” noted Mohale.
That could allow more non-bank companies to provide payment and collection services directly rather than relying on a bank to sit behind every offering.
The opening will not mean lighter oversight. Non-banks performing regulated activities will still face requirements related to licensing, governance, anti-money laundering, fraud prevention, resilience and operational risk.
The framework is still being developed, with the current draft undergoing industry engagement and piloting. According to Mohale, the anticipated release date is the first quarter of 2027.
While regulation changes who can participate, the infrastructure determines how payments move. Nthabiseng Sibanda, Standard Bank’s head of payments for regional Africa, said the transformation depends on something less visible than a new payment app: the quality of the information travelling with each transaction.
“None of that happens without quality underlying data,” she explained.
ISO 20022, the global standard for payment messaging, is central to this change. Instead of relying heavily on free text, payments can carry more structured information about addresses, locations and payment purposes. That can reduce payment exceptions and manual processing while improving fraud detection and screening.
The changes extend beyond South Africa’s borders. Harmonised balance-of-payments codes across the Common Monetary Area are intended to give banks a standardised system for identifying payment purposes, reducing delays caused by inconsistent classifications.
Further into the region, Transactions Cleared on an Immediate Basis (TCIB) is being developed to enable immediate low-value cross-border payments.
Standard Bank is also using China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) to provide a more direct route for renminbi transactions. Sibanda said the bank has processed more than R21 billion ($1.3 billion) through the system since its inception, reaching 12 African countries.
The Standard Bank executive, however, warned that faster rails will not fix poor information. Sibanda said businesses need to test their payment channels, improve beneficiary and address details, and ensure templates and supporting documents are up to date.
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