BankservAfrica, the automated payments clearing house that built and maintains PayShap, the platform for real time local interbank payments using cell phone numbers as identifiers – has increased the upper payment limit for PayShap transactions from R3 000 to R50 000.

Speaking to TechCentral at a media event jointly hosted by BankservAfrica and First National Bank on Wednesday, BankservAfrica CEO Stephen Linnell said not all “participants” (banks) have enabled the new payment upper limit for their customers yet.

“From the system operator side, we have enabled transactions up to R50 000. But obviously each bank, which controls the channel to their customers, determines when they are comfortable to move and the associated pricing for that,” Linnell said.

According to Linnell, the primary reason for allowing transactions of up to R50 000 on PayShap has to do with BankservAfrica’s intention to deprecate its legacy real-time clearing (RTC) system. When it was implemented 20 years ago, RTC was – and for a long time remained – a global leader in fast payments. However, said Linnel, RTC is now a legacy system.

“We are looking to migrate the flows off RTC and onto PayShap so we can turn off the old systems and move them onto the newer, cheaper platform,” he explained.

The move shifts PayShap’s identity from a low-value transaction platform aimed mainly at consumers and gives it “mid-tier” capabilities suitable to the needs of companies. Linnel said BankservAfrica does not want PayShap’s expansion to take away from the platform’s original goal of providing access and improving financial inclusion in the lowest tiers of society.

Rapid payments

Launched in March 2023, PayShap had support from four of South Africa’s major banks – Nedbank, Absa, Standard Bank and FNB – from day one. Capitec and TymeBank later added support for the rapid payments system. Each bank has its own fee structure for using the platform, with most choosing to adopt tiered pricing based on the amount transferred. TymeBank surprised the market in August 2023 when it announced all PayShap transactions on its platform would be free of charge.