“One of South Africa’s largest grocery retailers Pick n Pay is expanding a pilot of adding cryptocurrency as a payment option to more stores after the successful completion of the first phase, it said on Tuesday. The announcement came weeks after the Financial Sector Conduct Authority formally declared crypto assets as a financial product in South Africa, enabling them to be regulated and clearing the way for cryptocurrency to be a mainstream method of payment…The retailer ran the first phase of the pilot in 10 Western Cape province stores over the past five months with pre-selected testers. It has now extended it to a further 29 stores for testing with customers, with the intention to roll it out to all stores in the coming months, Pick n Pay said.”

“South Africa’s Rapid Payments Programme, an industry-wide initiative to enable instant funds transfers between banks, is about to deliver its first service. Called PayShap, it is the country’s first real-time interbank digital payments service for low value payments. It will be initially be offered in 2023 by four banks: Absa, FNB, Nedbank and Standard Bank. The roll-out will then extend to more banks, which will start offering the service in the months to follow. PayShap is regarded a major milestone for the payment industry, aimed at addressing the key goals recognised by the South African Reserve Bank’s Vision 2025 for financial inclusion, a reduced dependency on cash, and the development of a modern, integrated platform for digital payments.”

“South Africa’s financial watchdog has classified cryptocurrency assets as financial products, a notice in the government gazette said on Wednesday, enabling them to be regulated. In the brief notice, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) said a crypto asset, which it referred to as “a digital representation of value”, must be regulated in South Africa from the date of publication. Regulations that the authorities have said they planned to introduce include applying foreign exchange controls and licensing crypto trading companies.”

“South Africa has recently seen a flood of affordable point-of-sale machines targeting small businesses. The most popular are budget wireless devices imported from abroad that allow businesses to accept credit and debit cards.  But it’s now possible to accept card payments without a card reading device, using what the industry calls Software Point of Sale, or SoftPOS. Simply by downloading free fintech apps on a compatible smartphone, merchants can accept tap-to-pay card transactions.   A handful of free mobile apps in South Africa allow this functionality, and at least two leading banks are buying into this technology as part of their merchant offerings.”

“FNB has started charging an “international payment fee” for using one of its cards to pay for popular online services like Netflix, Spotify, Steam, and YouTube Premium. Several FNB customers have complained about the fee appearing on their account statements from July, after FNB’s price changes for the 2022/2023 period came into effect. While the bank’s latest pricing guide mentioned a 2% charge on international payments, it specifically stated this was for currency conversion. However, the payments the customers had made were all rand-denominated.”

“A major change is coming to SA’s banking and payments sector. Known as the Rapid Payment Programme (RPP), this evolutionary banking concept aims to create a simpler, safer instant payment ecosystem that would give people the ability to make real-time payments using simple identifiers such as mobile numbers or e-mail addresses. Led by BankservAfrica in collaboration with the Payments Association of SA (Pasa), RPP is the first of its kind in the country — unifying the entire banking sector under the common goal of broadening and modernising the industry to include those who had historically relied on cash as their primary payment method…”

“Nigerian fintech startup Paystack has been relatively quiet since it was bought by fintech giant Stripe last October. The deal, worth more than $200 million, caused shockwaves to the African tech ecosystem and offered some form of validation to work done by founders, startups and investors alike. Today, the payments company, which powers businesses with its payment API and is actively present in Nigeria and Ghana, is announcing its official launch in South Africa.”