Capitec has agreed to open its Capitec Pay platform to competing payment service providers, and not to favour it over the banking industry’s shared instant-payments rail, as conditions for regulatory approval of its acquisition of payments fintech Walletdoc.

The Competition Commission has recommended that the Competition Tribunal approve the transaction subject to those conditions. The tribunal must still rule on the deal, and the conditions take effect only if it does.

The commission disclosed the decision in a statement summarising rulings taken at its ordinary meetings on 21 July and 3 August.

Under the conditions, the merged entity must make Capitec Pay available to third-party payment service providers (PSPs) that are technically and commercially capable of integrating with the platform, and is barred from using confidential business information obtained from rival PSPs through their access to Capitec Pay to compete against them.

Capitec must also treat PayShap Request and the Rapid Payments Programme rail no less favourably than its own Capitec Pay product, except where differences are attributable to objectively verifiable and proportionate factors such as scheme design rules and risk control capabilities.

Capitec Pay is the bank’s proprietary pay-by-bank product, which lets merchants accept online payments without customers entering card details. Walletdoc is a registered third-party payment provider and system operator that offers Capitec Pay to its merchants alongside card payments, EFT-based payments and PayShap.

Both sides of the market

Capitec is also already active in merchant acquiring, payment processing and payment acceptance in its own right, according to the commission’s description of the parties.

The transaction therefore puts Capitec on both sides of the same market. It owns a payment rail that rival PSPs need in order to offer their merchants a Capitec payment option, and it will own a PSP competing against those same providers for merchant business.

The commission said the transaction does not raise significant public interest concerns.

PayShap launched in March 2023 with four banks, developed by BankservAfrica (now PayInc) together with the Payments Association of South Africa. Capitec joined a few months later.

However, uptake has disappointed. As TechCentral reported in December, high and inconsistent fees have kept PayShap in first gear, with sustained, frequent usage low across all banks — and a structural disincentive underneath it, in that cheap instant payments erode the fee income banks earn from the services PayShap would replace.

Capitec's head office in Stellenbosch. Image: Capitec — Capitec’s head office in Stellenbosch. Image: Capitec

The state has moved on that. BankservAfrica rebranded as PayInc in August 2025, and in November that year the Reserve Bank completed the acquisition of a 50% shareholding, establishing the company as a national payment utility jointly owned by the central bank and the commercial banks. Capitec and Investec subscribed as direct shareholders alongside the Reserve Bank, leaving Capitec an equal shareholder to Absa, FirstRand, Nedbank and Standard Bank — so the bank now being told not to disadvantage PayShap partly owns the company that runs it.

Capitec announced the Walletdoc acquisition in December, agreeing to pay R300-million in cash upfront plus a deferred earn-out of up to R100-million over three years, linked to the Capitec share price and contingent on performance milestones.

Walletdoc was founded in 2015 by Leonard Shenker and Dan Wagner, initially as a consumer bill-payment app. It provides payment gateway, payment orchestration and merchant acceptance services, primarily for e-commerce but also enabling card acceptance through point-of-sale devices. Walletdoc Holdings is wholly controlled by Walletdoc International, a private company incorporated in Cyprus. — © 2026 NewsCentral Media