Studio · Payments · Southern Africa
Payment integration services in South Africa and across Southern Africa
We integrate South African rails (PayShap, pay by bank, card gateways and debit orders) and the region’s mobile money, then build the webhooks, retries and reconciliation that decide whether the money matches the books.
What we build
- Card and pay-by-bank checkouts: Paystack, Peach Payments, Payfast, Ozow, Stitch and Yoco, on the web and in mobile apps.
- PayShap: instant payments and PayShap Request through the bank or PSP you already use.
- Recurring payments: card tokenisation, DebiCheck mandates and Capitec Pay recurring payments, with retries and dunning that respect the scheme rules.
- Regional mobile money: EcoCash and Paynow in Zimbabwe, MTN MoMo and Airtel Money in Zambia and Malawi, and M-Pesa in Mozambique, directly or through an aggregator.
- Cross-border payouts: moving Common Monetary Area transfers onto TCIB, and paying suppliers and staff across the region.
- Reconciliation: a daily match between what the provider says settled and what your database says was sold.
Two deadlines worth planning for
South Africa’s payment rules are changing under builders’ feet. Two changes need engineering work, not just a policy update.
- TCIB for Common Monetary Area transfers. Banks must move qualifying transfers between South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini off SADC-RTGS and onto TCIB. If you pay out across those borders, the routing and the reconciliation change. Read the TCIB deadline and how to migrate payouts.
- The SARB’s Authorisation Framework. Non-bank payment providers will be authorised by activity. If you collect money for others, initiate payments or issue e-money, your product design depends on it. Read what the framework changes for fintechs.
How we build payment integrations
The happy path takes an afternoon. The trouble arrives later: a webhook that never fires, a customer who pays twice, a payment that lands after your page timed out.
So we design for the failure first. Every payment gets a state, every webhook is verified and stored before it is acted on, retries are idempotent, and a job compares your records with the provider’s. The reasoning is in why a webhook needs checking, not trusting.
A working v1 usually lands in the first week, with weekly demos after it.
What affects the cost
Four things move a quote: how many rails and countries you need, whether money also goes out (refunds, payouts, splits), how much reconciliation your finance team expects, and whether your merchant accounts are already live with the providers.
We do not publish prices. After a scoping call we quote a fixed scope.
Also building in Kenya?
Our Nairobi team integrates M-Pesa Daraja, MTN MoMo and Airtel Money for East African products. See M-Pesa integration services, or read how Kenyan and Southern African payments differ.
Frequently asked questions
- Which South African payment providers do you integrate?
- Paystack, Peach Payments, Payfast, Ozow, Stitch and Yoco for cards and pay by bank, plus PayShap and DebiCheck through your bank or PSP. We recommend one on the scoping call based on your methods, volumes and settlement needs.
- Can you integrate mobile money outside South Africa?
- Yes. We integrate EcoCash through Paynow in Zimbabwe, MTN MoMo and Airtel Money in Zambia and Malawi, and M-Pesa in Mozambique, directly where the operator allows it and through an aggregator where that is faster to go live.
- Do you help with the TCIB move for Common Monetary Area payouts?
- Yes. We map your current cross-border payout flow, work with your bank on the TCIB route, and rebuild the reconciliation so every payout is accounted for after the switch.
- What happens when a payment webhook never arrives?
- Each payment has a state in your database and a scheduled job checks the provider for any payment that stays pending too long. Missing and duplicate notifications are caught and resolved, not left for finance to find.
- How much does a payment integration cost?
- It depends on the rails and countries, whether money goes out as well as in, and the reconciliation you need. We quote a fixed scope after a free scoping call.
Make the money match the books
Tell us which rails and countries you need and where payments happen today. We will scope it with you on a free call.
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