Monday 13 March 2023

#PayShap launches in South Africa and this is what it does

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB), BankservAfrica, and four prominent banks launched PayShap on Monday, 13 March 2023.

The Rapid Payments Programme will go live with the four banks immediately, meaning FNB, Absa, Nedbank, and Standard Bank customers can use the payment channel from today.


PayShap lets South African banking customers send and receive money using their cellphone number as a stand-in, or proxy, for their bank account number.

This is the first phase and first cohort of the PayShap launch. The first phase is focused on its instant clearing feature, which includes the pay-by-account and pay-by-proxy services.

The second phase will introduce a request-to-pay function that will let users initiate payment requests.

"Today, we are giving South Africa a flexible instant payment method. It's called PayShap," said BankservAfrica CEO Jan Pilbauer.

He said that there is no well-performing economy around the globe without such a payment method.

PayShap will allow South African bank account holders to pay and receive up to R3,000 per transaction instantly. The R3,000 limit applies to single transactions, while the daily limit is R5,000.

According to Nedbank's PayShap terms and conditions, customers will be assigned a ShapID set as their cellphone number by default. 

This ID is linked to their Nedbank account number.

Registered ShapIDs can be removed anytime, delinking the ID from your bank account number. If a customer's cellphone number changes, they must register a new ShapID.