Real-time payments in South Africa: the state of PayShap in 2026

PayShap, South Africa's real-time interbank payment scheme, has been live since March 2023. Three years in, it has processed over R100 billion across more than 136 million transactions, registered over five million ShapIDs, and expanded to 12 participating banks. 

The largest hurdle, however, has been getting up and running with PayShap Request, which allows customers to pay into merchants using PayShap, via a PSP like Stitch. Over the last few months, we’ve started to see meaningful progress and increased conversion on PayShap Request. Today, many of our enterprise clients are already up and running with PayShap Request as their core Pay by bank rail.

This article looks at where PayShap Request stands today, what the adoption curve reflects, and how it fits into South Africa's broader Pay by bank landscape.

What is PayShap, and what role does it play in South Africa’s payments landscape?

PayShap was born out of the South African Reserve Bank's (SARB) Rapid Payments Programme (RPP), part of the SARB's Vision 2025 strategy to modernise the national payment system. It was developed by PayInc (formerly BankservAfrica) in collaboration with the Payments Association of South Africa and the broader banking community, and is built on the ISO 20022 messaging standard used by leading real-time payments systems globally.

The scheme has three core features: 

• account-to-account payments
• a proxy payment system using a ShapID (typically a mobile number) as a stand-in for full banking details 
• and a request-to-pay function, known as PayShap Request.

One common point of confusion is how PayShap fits alongside other payment options in the market. The answer depends on the use case.

For person-to-person and account-to-account transfers, the more relevant comparison is Real-Time Clearing (RTC), the existing interbank rail that PayShap is designed to eventually replace. RTC is a pay-in and payout rail suited to higher-value transfers, with average transaction values of around R6,400. PayShap targets lower-value, higher-frequency payments, runs 24/7 including weekends and public holidays, and is intended to take over from RTC as limits increase over time. The current cap sits at R50,000, with the goal being to increase it over time.

For merchant payments, the more relevant comparison is pay by bank. Pay by bank is a pay-in mechanism initiated at checkout through a third-party provider, allowing customers to pay directly from their bank account without sharing card details. PayShap Request works differently: the customer just needs to enter their proxy, and a merchant initiated request appears in their banking app for approval.

Adoption of PayShap: what the data says

According to the Stitch 2026 Consumer Payments Report, 35% of South African consumers tried PayShap as a new payment method in the past 12 months, placing it fourth among new methods adopted, behind one-click wallets (58%), Buy Now Pay Later (39%) and Capitec Pay (37%). Looking at checkout preference by purchase type, PayShap ranked third for online purchases at 8.5% and fourth for groceries at 6.6%.

By late 2025, South Africans were processing an average of 45 million PayShap transactions per month, 80% of which were under R500. This represents a sharp increase from the five to six million monthly transactions recorded in 2024. That trajectory points to growing consumer familiarity with the scheme, particularly for smaller, everyday payments. 

The registration requirement remains a real friction point. To receive payments via mobile number, users need to register their ShapID within their banking app before their first transaction. Once registered, the experience is fast: the payer enters a mobile number or account number, authenticates within their banking app, and funds reflect within seconds. But the initial setup step, combined with inconsistent visibility of the PayShap feature across different banking apps, has contributed to slower uptake than policymakers initially anticipated.

Israel Skosana, Chief Product and Scheme Officer at PayInc, the operator of PayShap, pointed to consistency of experience as one of the core levers for improving adoption in a recent episode of the Between the Seams podcast by Stitch. "We learn from Pix in terms of the importance of consistency of experience, because that results in adoption. The fact that customers maybe ask 'how do I do a PayShap transaction?' at different banks shows that there could be inconsistency causing friction. That's something that has to be addressed." 

Skosana also named consumer education as an equally important factor: "Customers must know they'll get their money within 10 seconds. You need that consistency. It can't be two minutes at one bank and a couple of hours at another. When a customer says 'if I send this via PayShap, I know it's gonna be there within 10 seconds', that gives them trust and confidence."

PayShap Request and the merchant pivot

December 2024 marked a structural shift for PayShap with the introduction of PayShap Request. Where earlier iterations of PayShap were primarily used for person-to-person transfers, PayShap Request enables person-to-merchant (P2M) payments, allowing businesses and even informal traders to send a payment request directly to a customer's banking app. The customer approves in-app, and funds settle instantly.

The pivot toward merchant adoption is a deliberate strategic shift. If enough businesses accept PayShap payments, consumers will start using it because they need to, not because they've chosen to. This is the same strategy that drove Pix's adoption in Brazil, where a focus on business transactions preceded widespread consumer habit formation. 

For merchants, the real-time settlement and account-to-account nature of PayShap Request reduce exposure to card-not-present fraud and remove card interchange from the transaction. The SARB's Payments Ecosystem Modernisation (PEM) programme, launched in September 2025, has reinforced this direction, with the scheme positioned as a central pillar of the country's push toward broader digital payment adoption.

The opportunity for small and informal businesses is something Skosana is particularly focused on. "You can imagine if you're a spaza shop and you've been taking cash previously, suddenly you have record-keeping of your transactions that you can take to a credit provider. The opportunities of just digitising your payments has unlocked another opportunity for your business." 

On the future roadmap, he pointed to recurring and variable payment functionality as the next meaningful expansion of the scheme's merchant utility, noting that the prioritisation exercise is underway, and that PayShap should be understood as still in its early stage: "We're three years in. Kicking off in 2023, we're now asking: what is next, and what's possible?"

Where PayShap sits within a broader payments strategy

For merchants building their payments stack today, PayShap is best understood as one component of a multi-method approach. Consumers do not use a single payment method uniformly: they make choices based on what they're buying, how much it costs, which app is open and which method their bank has made most accessible. Our own analysis of PayShap from 2023 noted its role as a complement to other real-time bank-native options rather than a wholesale replacement.

According to  our 2026 Consumer Payments Report, there is no single dominant payment method in South Africa anymore. Capitec Pay accounts for around 40% of total payment value across our platform, digital wallets led by Apple Pay have surged, and Pay by bank, with PayShap increasingly integrated, continues to grow..

What this means for businesses

The volume data suggests PayShap is seeing a credible trajectory toward meaningful scale. Consumer familiarity is improving. The merchant use case, supported by PayShap Request, has opened a channel that the P2P-focused early years of the scheme could not.

Businesses that offer PayShap as part of a broader suite of payment options, rather than as a standalone method, are best placed to benefit.

The real-time payments infrastructure that PayShap represents is not a finished product. It continues to evolve, with QR+, an interoperable QR code, in development and further bank participation expected. The underlying rails are sound, and the regulatory environment is increasingly supportive. 

Skosana's longer-term view is that the distinction between rails will eventually become invisible to end users. "For the end user, I want to pay, or send money. I don't actually know what rail it goes on. What you will see in future is the convergence of payments." 

For businesses building payment experiences today, it’s important to note that the infrastructure is heading toward greater abstraction, with the merchant's job being to ensure customers can pay how they want to pay, not to engineer rail-specific flows. Offering PayShap alongside other bank-native methods, with intelligent routing based on bank availability, transaction value and customer eligibility, reflects that direction now.

FAQs

What is PayShap and how does it work?

PayShap is South Africa's real-time interbank payment scheme, developed by BankservAfrica as part of the SARB's Rapid Payments Programme. It allows users to send and receive money instantly, 24/7, using a mobile number (registered as a ShapID) or a bank account number. Payments clear within seconds across all 12 participating banks. A request-to-pay feature, PayShap Request, was introduced in December 2024, enabling merchants to send payment requests directly to customers.

How is PayShap different from instant EFT (pay by bank)?‍

PayShap is an interbank real-time payment scheme operated by PayInc and accessed through a user's banking app. Instant EFT, or pay by bank, is typically initiated at an e-commerce checkout through a third-party payment provider, allowing customers to pay directly from their bank account without sharing card details. The two rails are complementary: pay by bank is well-suited to online checkout for a wide range of transaction values, while PayShap is designed for lower-value, high-frequency and mobile-first transfers.

Do I need to register a ShapID to use PayShap?‍

You need a ShapID to receive payments via your mobile number, but it is not required to complete a PayShap transaction. With PayShap Request, customers who haven't registered a ShapID can use their bank account number instead, which reduces first-time friction significantly.

Why has PayShap adoption been slower than expected?‍

Several factors have contributed. Fee structures and limits set by individual banks have varied considerably, with some institutions pricing PayShap above comparable instant options at launch. The feature has also had inconsistent visibility across banking apps, and initial registration requirements created friction for first-time users. Both the fee landscape and the user experience are improving as more banks integrate the scheme and the SARB's Payments Ecosystem Modernisation programme increases pressure to standardise.

How should merchants think about offering PayShap at checkout?‍

PayShap is most effective as part of a multi-method payment offering rather than a standalone option. Offering PayShap alongside other bank-native methods like pay by bank and Capitec Pay, tends to produce stronger conversion outcomes than presenting any single method in isolation.

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