Capitec Pay VRP: variable recurring payments explained

Variable recurring payments, or VRP, solve a narrow but expensive problem: bills that recur but change. A customer gives a merchant one standing consent, with limits, and the merchant can then collect different amounts over time without asking the customer to approve each payment. Think utility usage, metered software, ride or delivery accounts, or a subscription with add-ons.

Capitec Pay VRP is that model for Capitec customers. Stitch announced it on 4 December 2025, and Stitch calls it the first variable recurring payments offering in South Africa^{[Stitch blog, checked 2026-11-05]}. It builds on Capitec Pay itself, which launched in early 2023^{[Capitec results, checked 2026-11-04]} for card-free payments from a Capitec account.

The date matters for how you plan. An announcement is not the same as broad availability, so treat VRP as something to pilot with your provider, not something to assume every Capitec customer has used. For how account payments, cards and debit orders fit together underneath, see how payments work in South Africa.

Each recurring method answers two questions differently: who approved the collection, and how much can it be?

Method	Who approves	How the amount works	Where it fits
Ordinary debit order	The business holds the mandate	Set by the mandate	Existing debit order books, simple fixed amounts
DebiCheck	The customer confirms the mandate with their own bank	Collections stay inside the approved terms	Premiums, fees, instalments
Stored card (tokenised)	The customer, at the first card payment	Whatever you charge the token	Digital subscriptions
Capitec Pay VRP	The customer gives a standing consent, with limits	Varies within the agreed limits	Usage-based or changing bills

The practical differences:

• Against a stored card, VRP draws from a bank account rather than a card, so it reaches customers who rarely pay by card and avoids failures from expired or replaced cards.
• Against DebiCheck, VRP is designed for amounts that change. A DebiCheck mandate describes the collections the customer agreed; VRP describes the limits the customer is comfortable with.
• Against a debit order, the customer, not just the business, has approved the arrangement, which changes the conversation when a charge is questioned. Debit orders, DebiCheck and Registered Mandates share a dispute window that fell to 60 calendar days from 13 April 2026^{[PASA, checked 2026-11-05]}; check with your provider how disputes on VRP charges are handled.

For the full comparison of recurring methods, start at recurring payments in South Africa. The DebiCheck integration guide covers mandate design in detail.

Through Stitch or Ozow. Stitch offers Capitec Pay, Capitec Pay VRP and PayShap Request^{[Stitch, checked 2026-11-05]}, so one integration can cover one-off bank payments, VRP and request-to-pay. Ozow offers Capitec Pay VRP for subscription and recurring payments^{[Ozow, checked 2026-11-04]}, next to its one-off Capitec Pay and pay-by-bank products. If you already work with a different gateway, ask it directly.

For developers, two facts shape the build. Stitch's developer documentation is at docs.stitch.money^{[Stitch developer docs, checked 2026-11-05]}, and its API is GraphQL^{[Stitch developer docs, checked 2026-11-05]}, with an alternative REST interface for creating payment requests^{[Stitch docs, checked 2026-11-05]}. Plan for a GraphQL client in your stack unless the REST interface covers every call you need. The Stitch API integration guide walks through the setup.

Two adjacent routes are worth knowing, even though neither is VRP:

• One-off Capitec Pay through a gateway you may already use. Paystack documents Capitec Pay as an open banking payment method available to businesses in South Africa only^{[Paystack docs, checked 2026-11-04]}. The Capitec Pay integration tutorial covers it.
• Bill payments the customer starts. Pay@ is integrated into the Pay Bills section of the Capitec banking app^{[Pay@, checked 2026-11-05]}, for billers who would rather the customer pay a statement from their banking app than be charged automatically.

Because of reach. Capitec has more than 26 million active clients, its FY2026 results say^{[Capitec results, checked 2026-11-04]}, so a billing method built for Capitec customers reaches a very large customer base. Consumers are also using Capitec Pay already: in Stitch's research, 37% of consumers had tried Capitec Pay in the past 12 months^{[Stitch blog, checked 2026-11-05]}.

There is also a precedent for subscriptions without cards. Canva partnered with EBANX and Capitec Pay to offer cardless subscriptions to South Africans^{[EBANX press release, checked 2026-11-05]}, which shows a global subscription business choosing a bank-account route for its South African customers.

If you would like a team to scope VRP alongside your existing card and debit order billing, Mctaba Labs payment integration builds recurring billing on South African rails.

The consent is the new object in your system. Design around it:

1. Consent creation. Your checkout sends the customer to approve the standing consent. Store the consent reference, the limits agreed, and when it was granted. Show the customer the limits in your own words before they leave your site, so the bank's prompt matches what they expect.
2. Charging within limits. Before every charge, check it against the stored limits yourself. A charge your own system knows will breach the consent should never be sent.
3. Revocation. Assume the customer can withdraw consent at any time. Treat a revoked consent as a hard stop, notify the customer, and offer another way to pay before the next bill is due.
4. Notifications and states. Charges succeed or fail asynchronously. Key every update on the charge reference so duplicate notifications change nothing, and keep a state machine for consents (pending, active, revoked, expired) and for charges (created, succeeded, failed).
5. Pre-charge communication. For variable bills, tell the customer the amount before you collect it. It is good practice, it reduces disputes, and it keeps the consent from feeling like a blank cheque.
6. Reconciliation. Match each charge to an invoice and to the provider's settlement report daily. The patterns in payment webhooks and reconciliation apply unchanged.

Keep VRP behind a billing interface that does not care which rail collects the money. Then a customer who leaves Capitec, or revokes consent, can move to a card or DebiCheck without your invoicing logic changing. The failed recurring payments guide covers the fallback and dunning side.

Ozow is the one provider we found that publishes a VRP price: 1.5% with a minimum of R1^{[Ozow pricing page, checked 2026-11-04]} per Capitec Pay VRP transaction. For one-off Capitec Pay, the published rates give you reference points when you negotiate:

• Ozow: 1.5% with a minimum of R1^{[Ozow pricing page, checked 2026-11-04]}.
• Peach Payments: 1.50% + R1.50^{[Peach Payments fees page, checked 2026-11-04]}.
• Stitch Express: 2% excluding VAT^{[Stitch Express pricing, checked 2026-11-05]}.
• Payfast: 2% + R2^{[payfast.io fees page, checked 2026-11-04]}.

Paystack offers Capitec Pay too, but we have not verified a Paystack rate for it. Ask for VRP pricing in writing, including any fee for setting up a consent, for failed charges and for refunds. Then compare the total against your current card and debit order costs for the same customers, including the cost of failed card payments you would no longer chase.

For a merchant using Stitch, regulation is mostly Stitch's concern. It matters more if you are a fintech thinking of offering VRP-style payments yourself. The SARB's draft Authorisation Framework treats payment initiation as a regulated activity: the May 2026 draft groups payment execution, covering clearing, settlement and payment initiation, as one category of payment activity^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-05]}, and it sets R2 million minimum capital for payment initiation^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-05]}. Those figures are from a draft and may change.

Two related pages go further: open banking in South Africa on where account access stands, and agentic payments under VRP and payment initiation rules on what happens when the payer is software.

Yes, as a pilot, if three things are true: a meaningful share of your customers bank with Capitec, your bills vary month to month, and card failures or debit order disputes are costing you money. Start with a segment of customers, keep cards and DebiCheck as fallbacks, and measure approval rates, failed charges and disputes against your current method.

No, not yet, if your amounts are fixed and your debit orders or cards already work well. DebiCheck or a stored card will do the job, and you can add VRP later behind the same billing interface.

For the regional view beyond South Africa, see payments in Southern Africa. When you are ready to add VRP to a live billing system, Mctaba Labs payment integration builds it with you.