PayShap - SA's new WhatsApp-based payment system

[Bradley Prior]

PayShap - SA's new WhatsApp-based payment system
The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) will soon launch a new payment service called PayShap to accelerate the country’s shift to a cashless society. [Daily Investor]

 

[Praemon]

Everything sound good except this:

"Payments can be made from a mobile phone at a low fee to the consumer, in real-time, and is available 24/7"

Wonder what banks will decide is a "low fee". Ultimately there should be zero fee, otherwise adoption will be very low, and we're back to the same fees for "real time EFT" of R10+.

 

[Apogee]

Also, can somebody please figure out how to do micro-payments so that we can at least pay something to the car security guards that they can easily access?

Always feel bad when I don't have change available.

 

[Galactica]

Crap name

 

[DapperDanMan]

Crap name

No, it's ShapShap ...

 

[DapperDanMan]

Always feel bad when I don't have change available.

Do they at least accept you(r) @Apogee, usually?

 

[Vanessa13]

Err.... I'll let others use it first and see if they get screwed somehow.

 

[konfab]

Everything sound good except this:

"Payments can be made from a mobile phone at a low fee to the consumer, in real-time, and is available 24/7"

Wonder what banks will decide is a "low fee". Ultimately there should be zero fee, otherwise adoption will be very low, and we're back to the same fees for "real time EFT" of R10+.

FNB has it as R7, which is the same as their normal instant eft.





https://www.fnb.co.za/downloads/pricing-guide/products/FNB_PricingGuide_EasyAccount.pdf?v=202206

And FNB have stated it will go live on the 13th of March.

Honestly, if banks price it like that, it won't replace cash. But FNB don't target lower income accounts, so I will wait until we see what the Capitecs and TymeBanks do.

 

[Praemon]

FNB has it as R7, which is the same as their normal instant eft.

View attachment 1487687



https://www.fnb.co.za/downloads/pricing-guide/products/FNB_PricingGuide_EasyAccount.pdf?v=202206

And FNB have stated it will go live on the 13th of March.

Honestly, if banks price it like that, it won't replace cash. But FNB don't target lower income accounts, so I will wait until we see what the Capitecs and TymeBanks do.

Thanks, and yeah, that's way too high. It's supposed to help with low value transactions. If you're paying R7 and only want to send a friend R100, that's 7% of the transaction value. Crazy. It will never work unless it's zero fee (or close to it) or baked into the monthly fee.

 

[konfab]

Thanks, and yeah, that's way too high. It's supposed to help with low value transactions. If you're paying R7 and only want to send a friend R100, that's 7% of the transaction value. Crazy. It will never work unless it's zero fee or baked into the monthly fee.

It is ridiculously high.

The idea behind the reserve bank doing this is to help people move away from cash.

The payment service will be similar to an electronic funds transfer. However, users will be able to use instant messaging applications like WhatsApp to exchange funds, said Neha Kumar, head of product partnerships at Stitch.

“Payments will be made to a bank account or a proxy, such as a mobile phone number, linked to an account or wallet at any bank,” Kumar said.

“Payments can be made from a mobile phone at a low fee to the consumer, in real-time, and is available 24/7.”

The use case for physical cash will be diminished, and cashless transactions will become more accessible and widespread.

PayShap will initially only be used for small-value transactions to a maximum value of R3,000, according to Kumar.

https://businesstech.co.za/news/ban...ing-new-payment-system-for-south-africa-soon/

An informal trader selling some bananas for R10 would not be able to use this. Formal economy is already cashless for all intents and purposes. It is the informal economy that is still cash based.

 

[Praemon]

It is ridiculously high.

The idea behind the reserve bank doing this is to help people move away from cash.


https://businesstech.co.za/news/ban...ing-new-payment-system-for-south-africa-soon/

An informal trader selling some bananas for R10 would not be able to use this. Formal economy is already cashless for all intents and purposes. It is the informal economy that is still cash based.

The article even says it takes after PIX in Brazil where banks there charge zero fees for personal transfers, and only charge for business/commercial, which makes sense. Guess they forgot about that part. Only hope is that it's just for the pilot phase and FNB didn't want too many transactions happening in the beginning (so are charging to reduce usage initially), and will then drop the fees.