South African Reserve Bank Sets Payment Milestones Through 2027

The South African Reserve Bank has set milestones through 2027 to expand access to its payment system and address PayShap’s adoption gap, as the instant-payment service remains well below card and bank-transfer volumes.

South African Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyago outlined the schedule at a conference in Pretoria on Oct. 20. The bank plans to publish an Authorisation Framework by the end of November 2026, a proposal that would allow appropriately regulated nonbanks to conduct specified payment activities. The framework would define which activities eligible nonbanks could perform. Proposed requirements include governance, customer-fund safeguards, operational resilience and reporting. Drafts of the framework and an exemption notice were opened for public comment in May.

PayShap is a real-time, low-value service launched in 2023 that allows customers to pay using simpler identifiers or bank-account details. By the time of Kganyago’s address, it had processed one billion transactions and transferred more than R1 trillion. Its 2025 transaction volume was about 6% of card transaction volume and less than 40% of electronic funds transfer credit volume. By the end of March 2027, the Reserve Bank aims to start addressing differences in participating banks’ limits, features and customer experience, along with varying prices, low public awareness and limited merchant acceptance.

“A national instant-payment service cannot feel like a different product depending on where a customer banks,” Kganyago said.

The Reserve Bank is targeting a first-quarter 2027 pilot for QR+, an interoperable standard intended to let merchants display one code that customers can use with their chosen payment service. The standard is designed to integrate with PayShap. The bank also plans to continue developing PEMKey, a system for reusable digital payment credentials held in a wallet controlled by the individual. The plan makes data reuse subject to customer consent and safeguards, and the bank gave no launch date for PEMKey.

The regional program targets moving qualifying retail payments to Transactions Cleared on an Immediate Basis by late April 2027, followed by a hub-and-spoke pilot across eight countries in October 2027. Both TCIB changes remain targets for 2027.