The Reserve Bank's recognition of the Payments Association of South Africa lapsed on 2 September, ending 27 years in which the banks governed the national payment system through a body they owned and funded.

Pasa's functions, staff and intellectual property have been split. Card and high-value payments, plus licensing and authorisation of payment institutions, moved to the central bank. Low-value payments, meaning the electronic transfers, debit orders and instant payments most South Africans use daily, moved to PayInc.

Two details decide how much this changes. PayInc, formerly BankservAfrica, is 50% owned by the Reserve Bank and 50% collectively by the participating commercial banks, so the payment types with the highest daily volumes have moved into an entity the banks half-own. And the rules themselves have not been rewritten.

Lesego Chauke, until 1 September Pasa's chief payments officer and now holding the same title at PayInc, was emphatic that payment clearing house rules, the sponsorship and designation models, risk and compliance obligations and the licensing position of system operators all remain as they were. From the user's perspective, she said, nothing changes.

What sits alongside this is the substantive reform: a modernisation programme building PayInc into a national payment utility that banks, fintechs and other non-banks plug into directly rather than reaching through a sponsor, plus the National Payment System Bill released for comment on 1 September. The Reserve Bank has received multiple hundreds of pages of feedback and expects the next iteration around the first quarter of 2027.

TechCentral reported on the transition from a Standard Bank client briefing and identifies the open question plainly: whether the Reserve Bank uses its new authority to widen access to non-banks. The Reserve Bank set out the transition of functions, citing structural and operational challenges with the management-body model. TechCentral separately covered governor Lesetja Kganyago on regulating fintechs under the draft Bill.

The direction is right, but the timing is not yet. Removing the bank-owned body that made the rules for bank participation is a genuine structural change, but a fintech still reaches the system through a sponsor today, and the piece that removes that is a separate programme whose next draft lands around early 2027.

The reform that matters is the shift from regulating entities to regulating activities, which is what lets a non-bank do things that previously needed a bank licence. Standard Bank's Nthabiseng Mohale was blunt about the trade: perform the same activity as a bank and you carry the same governance, anti-money-laundering, fraud and operational risk requirements.

Two thresholds worth noting now: Closed-loop schemes avoid full authorisation only below R15-million in annual transaction value or one million customers, and third-party processors will be limited to two formal beneficiary accounts. If you are building anything in this space, as Yoco is, commenting on the Bill is the only action available this year.

You might also like our piece on how TurnStay is attacking cross-border card fees, how SA online retail reached a tenth of all retail turnover, and the SA banking trojan reading one-time PINs off Android phones.

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