SARB, PayInc and what happened to PASA in 2026

For three decades South Africa's banks ran their own payment rules through PASA, the Payments Association of South Africa. Established in 1996^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-05]}, it was the industry body the SARB recognised as the payment system management body: it wrote the clearing rules, admitted participants and registered the third-party payment providers that sit between merchants and banks.

That arrangement ended in two steps. From 11 August 2026^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]} the SARB took over some clearing house and rule-related functions, together with the licensing, authorisation and registration of payment institutions. The functions moving to PayInc followed on 2 September 2026^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]}, the same day PASA's recognition as the management body was withdrawn^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-05]}.

If you are new to how the rails fit together, read how payments work in South Africa first. This page is about the governance change and what it means for anyone building on those rails.

The short version for builders: nothing in the payment flow changed overnight. The change is in who writes the rules, who registers you, and who you email when something breaks.

The SARB published a function guide with the transition. Here is how it reads for a developer or a payments team:

Function	Now handled by	Since
Rules and standards for the national payment system	SARB[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]	11 August 2026[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]
Authorisation and registration of system operators and third-party payment providers	SARB[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]	11 August 2026[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]
Clearing house coordination and industry engagement	SARB and PayInc[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]	2 September 2026[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]
EFT credits and debits, DebiCheck, Registered Mandate, PayShap and RTC	PayInc[SARB media release and FAQ, checked 2026-11-05]	2 September 2026[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]

Two details matter for anyone reading old documentation. First, PayInc is the company formerly called BankservAfrica^{[PayInc Business Report 2025, checked 2026-11-04]}, so integration guides and bank contracts written before the rebrand still name the old company. Second, PayInc is no longer a purely bank-owned utility: the SARB holds a 50% stake in it^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]}. The central bank now sits on both sides of retail payments, as rule-maker and as part owner of the operator.

If you would rather have someone check your collection and payout flows against the new arrangement, Mctaba Labs payment integration does that review as part of a build.

No. The SARB said there would be no disruption to everyday payments, with clearing and settlement continuing as normal throughout the transition^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]}. The schemes themselves are the same schemes. Your bank or payment service provider still submits EFT batches, DebiCheck mandates and PayShap requests the way it did before; only the body administering the scheme rules changed.

What did change in the same year is a rule many collection systems depend on. The dispute period for debit orders, DebiCheck and Registered Mandates fell from 365 days to 60 calendar days from 13 April 2026^{[PASA, checked 2026-11-05]}. If your reconciliation or customer service process assumed a customer could dispute a debit order for a year, it now has a much shorter window to plan around. The DebiCheck integration guide and the Registered Mandate explainer cover what that means for mandate design.

Check three things in your own systems:

• Hard-coded references to PASA. Error messages, help-centre articles and terms of service that tell customers PASA governs debit order disputes are now wrong. Point them at the bank and the scheme rules instead.
• Dispute handling windows. Any job that holds funds, flags chargebacks or ages disputes against a year-long window needs the shorter period.
• Contacts in runbooks. Escalation paths that end at a PASA mailbox should route to the SARB for authorisation questions and to PayInc for scheme operations.

This is where the transition bites hardest. Authorisation and registration of payment clearing house system operators, system operators and third-party payment providers moved to the SARB on 11 August 2026^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]}. A TPPP, for example a platform that collects money from customers on behalf of merchants, used to register with PASA. It now deals with the central bank directly.

Three rules soften the move:

• Third-party payment provider registrations granted before PASA's recognition was withdrawn stay valid until the SARB publishes the Authorisation Framework directive^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]}.
• Applications submitted before 11 August 2026 continue to be processed by the SARB^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]}, wherever they had got to.
• The members portal moved to the SARB^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-04]}, so log-ins, renewals and document uploads happen there now.

The bigger change is still ahead. The SARB published a draft directive on payment activities, known as the Authorisation Framework, in November 2025^{[SARB Annual Report 2025/26, checked 2026-11-05]}. It replaces the old registration model with authorisation by activity, and it is what will eventually decide whether your current registration carries over or needs reworking. We cover it in detail in the SARB non-bank Authorisation Framework, and the step-by-step route is in how to become a non-bank payment provider. If you are not sure whether the TPPP category covers you at all, start with what a TPPP is.

Two dates you may see quoted elsewhere, the date of the directive to PASA and PayInc and the date the SARB completed its PayInc stake, appear differently in different sources. We have left both out until we can confirm them against the primary documents.

The SARB's own explanation is institutional: it says the transition strengthens the regulatory, supervisory, oversight and operational arrangements of the national payment system^{[SARB, checked 2026-11-05]}. Read alongside the rest of its programme, the direction is clearer.

The Governor put the problem bluntly in October: "at the moment, anyone who wants to access the payment system has to go through a bank"^{[BIS: Kganyago, checked 2026-11-05]}. He then named four building blocks of a better payment system: opening the system to non-banks, deepening the use of PayShap, QR+ interoperability, and a single digital ID for payments^{[BIS: Kganyago, checked 2026-11-05]}. An industry association run by its bank members was an awkward place to write rules that let non-banks in. A central bank that also co-owns the operator can push that change through.

The legal groundwork is moving at the same time. On 20 May 2026 the Prudential Authority said^{[SARB Prudential Authority, checked 2026-11-05]} it intends to issue an Exemption Notice that takes specified payment activities out of the definition of the business of a bank^{[Prudential Authority, checked 2026-11-05]}. Without that, a fintech doing some of these activities could be treated as taking deposits like a bank. With it, the Authorisation Framework can authorise non-banks activity by activity.

The Payments Ecosystem Modernisation programme is the umbrella for all of this, and QR+ is the first piece most merchants will touch.

A short checklist, in order of urgency:

1. If you hold a TPPP registration, confirm your details on the SARB members portal and diarise the Authorisation Framework publication. Your registration is safe until then, not after.
2. If you run debit order collections, update dispute ageing, refund rules and customer-facing copy for the shorter dispute window.
3. If you integrate PayShap or EFT through a bank or PSP, there is no code to change. Update the governance section of your documentation and the escalation contacts in your runbooks.
4. If you plan to launch a payment product in the next year, scope it against the draft Authorisation Framework now rather than the PASA rules it replaces. Which activity you perform, issuing, acquiring, initiating or collecting for others, decides which authorisation you will need.

For the regional picture, including the rails that connect South Africa to its neighbours, see payments in Southern Africa. And when you want the build or the compliance review done for you, Mctaba Labs payment integration works on exactly these South African rails.