Real-time payments in South Africa 2023 | PayShap Report

Overview

This report shares a compilation of views from PayShap programme participants, relating to their experience of developing PayShap, their lessons learnt on the programme, the current state of the payments industry and their ideas for future innovation. We describe the payment industry’s journey to develop PayShap which, at its core, was a social contract amongst industry participants to develop a low-cost real-time proxy payment solution that would lay the foundational building block for an inclusive modernised, and platform based payments architecture. 

The PayShap journey describes how the industry collaborated to develop the commercial case and South Africa’s case for change for real-time payments, to design and sign off the solution proposition, to mobilise partners and the entire industry to build the platform, to finalise the rulebooks, and to conclude the brand name for the scheme and real-time services where PayShap, as we know it, was born.

The launch of PayShap on 13 March 2023 is an important step in the payments journey for South Africa — and everyone who played some part in the programme should take the time to reflect on this achievement and all it entailed. 

However, the journey is by no means done. Now, more than ever, is the time for the industry to renew and rejuvenate its focus on the journey ahead, and to recall the ultimate reason for embarking on this in the first place. With the potential to unlock even more opportunities for further innovation, strengthening modernisation and impacting South Africans’ lives for the better, our payments industry will need to continue collaborating to make instant payments available to everyone!