The PayShap Governance Council has appointed Vuyo Mpako Pr Eng as its Independent Chairperson with effect from [effective date]. Mpako takes over stewardship of the body responsible for strategic oversight of South Africa’s real-time payments scheme at one of the most consequential points in its short history.
The appointment follows a period of steep growth. PayShap crossed one billion cumulative transactions on 18 June 2026, a little over three years after launching on 13 March 2023, and now processes more than 60 million transactions a month. Fourteen banks participate in the scheme, including every major South African bank alongside Al Baraka Bank South Africa, eNL Mutual Bank, HBZ Bank and OM Bank.
Mpako brings engineering, banking and technology experience to the role. A registered professional engineer, he is managing director at NEXT176 and chairperson of Quickwill, and has held senior positions at Old Mutual, Standard Bank Group, Vodacom and Motorola Mobility across digital banking, strategy and product development. He holds postgraduate qualifications in electronic engineering and an MBA in monetary economics, with executive education from Stanford University and the MIT Sloan School of Management.
The Governance Council provides strategic oversight of the PayShap Scheme, fosters alignment across the industry, and works to ensure the scheme delivers value to consumers, businesses, banks, fintechs and the wider economy. An independent chairperson is intended to bring impartial direction to a body whose participants include competing institutions.
The appointment coincides with a shift in the scheme’s direction. After three years dominated by person-to-person transfers, PayShap is expanding into merchant payments, e-commerce and QR-based transactions, supported by the PayShap Request pay-by-request function. Reform of the National Payment System is expected to open participation to regulated non-bank payment service providers, widening the range of institutions the Governance Council will need to accommodate.