The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has released a Digital Payments Roadmap designed to promote competition and innovation, cost-effectiveness, interoperability and financial inclusion.
The roadmap, which is part of the broader National Payment System Framework and Strategy: Vision 2025, is expected to help increase the pace of adoption of new and existing digital payment options.
As noted by SARB, there continues to be a reliance on cash with recent research showing that cash usage in South Africa is high, even by those who receive their incomes electronically. Many of these immediately withdraw their cash to use in spaza shops and at vendors that do not accept digital payments. Additionally, 74% full-time employees in the MSME sector are paid in cash, while 95% of the MSME customers pay using cash and only 35% use digital media.
There are also other challenges such as high costs to consumers and small, micro and medium-sized enterprises; fragmented systems; financial exclusion of underserved and disadvantaged communities and financial and digital illiteracy. SARB notes a slow modernisation of legacy systems; restricted access to infrastructure, including Internet/Wi-Fi; and a lack of trust as all barriers to the rate of adoption of digital payments.
With this in mind, the roadmap is aiming to remove these obstacles, increase digital payments accessibility and usability, and unlock the potential of digital payments in the region. In collaboration with National Treasury and the payment industry, SARB has made some headway, in recent years, including the phasing out of cheques, the launch of the new faster payments system PayShap in March 2023, the introduction of contactless payments and quick response (QR) codes, among other things.
A range of stakeholders are expected to help implement actions in the roadmap including the SARB, National Treasury, other regulatory authorities, government departments, agencies and municipalities, fintechs, mobile money operators and consumers.
Download the full Digital Payments Roadmap
