South Africa has never had more ways to pay. At the point of sale in 2026, a consumer can tap or insert a card, open a banking app and make a PayShap transfer, scan a QR while deciding to split the purchase across three interest-free instalments using PayJustNow or Payfex, tap their phone to pay via digital wallet, redeem from any one of a growing number of loyalty and rewards programmes, or hand over cash, all while the next customer is awaiting their turn to pay. The infrastructure to support innovative payment solutions is evolving rapidly in the country.
This evolution is largely down to how the South African Reserve Bank’s (SARB’s) Payments Ecosystem Modernisation (PEM) and Vision 2025 have prioritised payment system reform and economic inclusion. It is a commitment that has prioritised the underlying rails and regulatory framework for digital payments and institutions have been taking advantage. The gap now is less about infrastructure capacity and more about activating usage and participation.
Alternative payment methods (APMs) are arriving faster than consumers and merchants can absorb them and the gap between what is technically available and what people use in their daily lives is wide enough to keep cards in the centre of the ecosystem. PayShap is perhaps one of the best examples of this dynamic. Launched in March 2023 under SARB’s Vision 2025 payment modernisation agenda, it was designed to become a genuine alternative to cash. It’s instant, interoperable, low cost and built into banking apps used by most South Africans and, by the end of 2025, had processed more than 461 million transactions.
The system works, but according to Capitec, the market leader in PayShap transactions, they only take up a 59% share of all PayShap payments in the country – only a small slice of the institution’s overall debit activity. Three years in, and the solution hasn’t become the default for instant payments as most users still reach for their card and to their digital wallets for instant payments which attract fees which are known to them.
This choice doesn’t come down to a poor product; it comes down to awareness, trust, and perceived cost. While PayShap clearly solves the need for instant and secure payments elegantly, a lot of people don’t understand how to use it. Information isn’t being disseminated to the right markets in the right way. Brand awareness exists, but it’s not education and this distinction is significant in a market where the barriers to entry can be cost, technology and behavioural patterns.
For merchants, the challenges that come with adopting and implementing new solutions are particularly around operational complexity. A merchant today isn’t choosing between payment methods; they’re accumulating them because they must meet the customer where they are most comfortable. Each method of payment, from the QR code to PayShap to cards, may sit at a different point in the operational ecosystem and each requires its own training, reconciliation process and payment journey at the point of sale. The cashier trained in BNPL six months ago has to navigate the process fluently with a customer in real time while the customer navigates between apps on their device, and everything must work fast.
This fragmentation is an argument for understanding how adoption works. BNPL succeeded in South Africa at a time when QR code payment adoption was not taking off because it solved a problem millions of South Africans felt acutely: managing constrained cash flow. The mechanism gave the consumer with R400 in hand and a R2,000 need to make a purchase immediately, while paying the difference over time, with merchants receiving full payment upfront. Adoption and utility increased as the model directly addressed consumer cash flow constraints, making purchases more manageable over time.
The practical implication for the payment ecosystem is interoperability. Instead of a fragmented environment where each APM lives in its own closed loop with its own app, onboarding and account, there needs to be a measure of interconnected functionality. Also, education needs to evolve to meet users where they transact. If they understand the solution, they’ll be more inclined to use it.
And these are the reasons why cards are unlikely to disappear in South Africa any time soon. They are widely understood, accepted and trusted. If the industry wants this to change, then it needs to take adoption as seriously as innovation, and this means building beyond the rails that define new payment methods and creating the on-ramps that get people there.
Written by Ntombenhle “Enhle” Annegbe-Enahoro, IPP Product Manager at Ecentric