South Africa

South Africa is among the global early adopters of real-time payments, having launched its interbank instant payments system Real-Time Clearing (RTC) in 2006. Despite being available for 17 years, real-time payments have not gained significant prominence due to several factors, including limited customer awareness, limited participation, and high fees charged by banks on RTC transfers. Consequently, real-time payments still account for only a 1.7% share of payments by volume in 2023. However, South Africa launched a new instant payments system, PayShap, in 2023. This new mobile-friendly instant payments system claims to offer a cost-effective, real-time payments service for bank-to-bank transfers, a proxy service to allow transfers based on mobile numbers or bank-generated ID numbers, a Request to Pay service, and implementation with common retail payment services. PayShap is anticipated to provide the much-needed push for real-time payments growth in South Africa, but its impact has not yet been measured.