PayShap limits and fees by bank

The bank you pay from. PayInc reports that the PayShap transaction limit was raised from R3,000 to R50,000 in October 2024, although the payment threshold is set by the payer's bank^{[PayInc Business Report 2025, checked 2026-11-04]}. The scheme figure is a ceiling. Each bank decides how much of that room it gives its own customers.

That rule is the source of a lot of confusion. People quote the scheme figure as if every bank applied it, while others quote an old bank figure from before the change. Both can be wrong for your account. The number that counts is the one your own bank applies at the moment you press pay.

It also settles who can change the limit. The receiver cannot raise it, and neither can the merchant or the payment service provider in the middle. If a customer's bank caps PayShap below the amount of an invoice, that customer cannot pay the whole invoice in one PayShap payment, however the merchant set up its checkout.

If you are new to the rail, what PayShap is and how it works covers the basics, and how payments work in South Africa shows where PayShap sits next to EFT, cards and the other rails.

Here is every figure we could confirm from a bank's own page, terms or fee guide on the last check.

PayShap limits and fees at banks with a figure we could verify

Bank	Limit per payment	Fee for sending a PayShap payment
GoTyme Bank	Instant payments of up to R50,000	Free up to R5,000; a flat R7 above that
Nedbank	R50,000 maximum payment	No figure we could verify on the last check
Standard Bank	Up to R50,000 per transaction	No figure we could verify on the last check
Al Baraka Bank	Up to R5,000 per transaction	No figure we could verify on the last check
Discovery Bank	No figure we could verify on the last check	R1 for R100 or less; R5 from R100 to R1,000; above R1,000, 0.55% of the amount, capped at R40
HBZ Bank	No figure we could verify on the last check	Free up to R5,000; R25 above that (excluding VAT)

Last verified: 2026-11-04. Sources, checked 2026-11-04 to 2026-11-05: GoTyme Bank help article, Nedbank, Standard Bank PayShap page, Al Baraka Bank PayShap product page, Discovery Bank, HBZ Bank. Each figure comes from the bank's own published page, terms or fee guide. Banks that are not listed did not publish a figure we could verify on the last check. The table is refreshed monthly; confirm the figure in your banking app before a large payment.

Read the table as a list of what could be verified, not as a ranking. Four banks published a limit we could check, two published a fee, and GoTyme Bank published both. For every other bank, Capitec, FNB and Absa included, we could not verify a current PayShap limit or fee from the bank's own published pages on the last check. They are left out on purpose. A guessed figure on a page like this does more harm than a gap, because people use it to decide whether a payment will go through.

So if your bank is missing, confirm the figure in your banking app or in the bank's current fee guide before you rely on PayShap for a large payment. The same goes for business accounts: check the tariff for the account you actually use, because business and personal pricing are not always the same.

If your checkout or payout flow has to cope with these differences, Mctaba Labs payment integration can build the limit handling and the fallback methods into it.

Two pricing patterns show up in the verified figures.

A free band, then a flat fee. GoTyme Bank makes PayShap payments up to R5,000 free and charges a flat R7 above that^{[GoTyme Bank help article, checked 2026-11-04]}. Under this model most everyday payments cost nothing, and every payment above the band costs the same, whatever its size.

Tiered fees that turn into a capped percentage. Discovery Bank charges R1 for PayShap payments of R100 or less, R5 from R100 to R1,000, and above R1,000 it charges 0.55% of the amount, capped at R40^{[Discovery Bank, checked 2026-11-04]}. Small payments cost a little each time, and the cap stops very large payments from becoming expensive.

Which pattern suits you depends on how you pay. Someone who sends many small amounts a month pays nothing under a free band and something every time under a tiered model. Someone who sends one large amount a month pays a flat fee or hits a cap under either model. Size matters more than you might expect, too: Stitch reports that 80% of PayShap transactions were under R500 by late 2025^{[Stitch blog, checked 2026-11-05]}. For most payments, then, the fee band decides the cost and the limit never comes into it.

Pricing is not a side issue for the scheme either. The SARB Governor named four things holding PayShap back: parity, pricing, promotion and the acceptance perimeter^{[BIS: Kganyago, checked 2026-11-05]}. The fee a payer sees on each payment is the part of that pricing question this table answers. The Governor's four blockers page works through all four.

If you run a checkout, an invoicing tool or a marketplace, the limit that matters is your customer's bank's, and you cannot see it before the payment is attempted. Design for that.

• Treat a limit decline as a normal outcome. When a payment fails because the amount is over the payer's threshold, show a clear message and offer another method on the same screen. Do not make the customer start again.
• Offer a second method for large amounts. With one verified bank capping PayShap at R5,000 per transaction^{[Al Baraka Bank PayShap product page, checked 2026-11-04]}, any checkout that takes larger amounts needs instant EFT, card or Capitec Pay beside PayShap. Our PayShap vs instant EFT vs Capitec Pay comparison sets out which to pair with it.
• Do not split one invoice into several PayShap requests to get under a limit. Each part needs its own approval, each can fail on its own, and your reconciliation has to stitch them back into one payment. A different method for that customer is simpler.
• Do not hard-code a bank's limit. Banks revise these figures. Store the decline reason your provider returns and let that, not a constant in your code, drive the fallback.
• For payouts, your own bank's limit applies. When your business pays suppliers or sellers by PayShap, you are the payer, so the threshold your bank sets on your account caps each payout.

For collections, the flow to look at is PayShap Request, where the business asks and the customer approves. The PayShap Request explainer covers how that flow works, PayShap for developers covers which banks and providers give you API access, and the Stitch PayShap Request tutorial builds one end to end.

Three checks take a few minutes and save a failed payment.

1. Find the limit your bank applies to your account. Look in your banking app's payment limit settings or on your bank's PayShap page. If the app and an older help article disagree, go with the app, or ask the bank.
2. Read the fee in the current fee guide. Use the guide for your account type, check the date on it, and make sure it covers the account you pay from.
3. For a large or urgent payment, check before you need it. If the amount is close to your limit, confirm the figure first or use another method, rather than finding out at checkout or on a supplier's deadline.

Businesses should do the same exercise for the bank account they collect into and the one they pay out of. The two may sit on different tariffs.

Every month. Each bank's figure was checked against the bank's own page on the date shown under the table, and every figure is checked again each month. Bank limits and fees change with pricing reviews and product changes, so the date matters as much as the number. If a bank's own current page shows a different figure from ours, the bank's page is right.

For the wider picture, including how PayShap compares with what the rest of the region uses, see payments in Southern Africa. The PayShap statistics page tracks how much the scheme carries. And if you want PayShap built into your product with the limit handling and fallbacks done properly, Mctaba Labs payment integration takes on exactly that kind of build.