Three years after the launch of PayShap, South Africa’s real-time payment system, the technology behind instant bank transfers is no longer the issue. The question is why consumers are still paying to move their own money.

Digital challenger banks argue that instant payments should be treated as a core banking service rather than a premium feature. “Every bank has its own commercial model and pricing strategy, so we can’t speak for the decisions other institutions make,” Cheslyn Jacobs, CEO of GoTyme Bank South Africa, told TechCabal in an interview. “From GoTyme Bank’s perspective, we believe that instant payments are a core banking service rather than a premium feature.”

As technology evolves and payment infrastructure matures, Jacobs said customers should not have to think twice about moving their own money because of transaction fees. The debate extends beyond GoTyme’s pricing strategy. 

It reflects a shift in South Africa’s banking sector. With instant payments now widely available, banks are increasingly competing on price and customer experience. Although every major bank now supports real-time payments, customers pay very different fees depending on their bank, raising questions about whether those charges are still justified.

According to publicly available pricing, GoTyme Bank offers PayShap transfers free across all supported transaction values. Other banks charge between R1 ($0.061) and R10 ($0.61), while Discovery Bank charges up to 0.5% of the transaction value, capped at R35 ($2). 

Nedbank, one of South Africa’s big four banks, also charges different fees depending on whether money is sent to a cellphone number or directly to a bank account. For consumers who regularly send money to relatives, pay domestic workers, split bills, or pay small businesses, those charges can add up.

Banks maintain that instant payments carry real costs. Running the service requires investment in payment infrastructure, fraud prevention, cybersecurity, compliance, and settlement systems. Transaction fees help recover part of those costs while contributing to non-interest income.

GoTyme argues that those costs should increasingly be absorbed as part of delivering a modern banking service. “For us, offering free PayShap transfers reflects our broader philosophy of making banking simpler, more rewarding and more accessible, because that is how banking should be,” Jacobs said.

The debate is not unique to South Africa. Brazil’s Pix, launched in 2020, became the country’s dominant payment method by allowing consumers to send money instantly at little or no cost. India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) followed a similar path, processing billions of transactions every month while making free instant payments the norm.

Jacobs believes South Africa has already built the infrastructure needed to achieve similar adoption. “International markets have shown that adoption accelerates when digital payments are simple, convenient, and affordable. Pix and UPI demonstrate that when customers can make instant payments easily and at little or no cost, those services quickly become part of everyday life,” he said. “South Africa has made significant progress by establishing a modern real-time payment infrastructure through PayShap. The next phase is encouraging widespread everyday usage.”

PayShap was introduced to make digital payments faster, cheaper, and more accessible, particularly for lower-income consumers and the informal economy, where cash remains dominant. Greater adoption could also reduce the costs and risks of handling cash for small businesses. Despite banks using the same payment rail, pricing remains inconsistent, suggesting that competition is moving beyond instant payments themselves and towards the overall digital banking experience.

“We believe the opportunity isn’t simply to make payments faster; it’s to make digital payments so easy and accessible that they become the default way South Africans exchange value,” Jacobs said. Whether transaction fees disappear altogether remains uncertain. South Africa’s largest banks continue to earn revenue from payment services, and none has indicated that free instant transfers will become standard across the industry in the near future.

Still, Jacobs expects banking competition to continue evolving. “We believe the industry is moving towards a future where instant payments increasingly become a standard feature of everyday banking rather than a service customers pay extra to access,” he said. “Whether every bank reaches that point within five years will depend on each institution’s strategy, but the long-term direction is clear.”

As instant payments become commoditised, banks are likely to compete less on transaction fees and more on the overall customer experience. For consumers, the bigger question is whether paying to send money will remain part of everyday banking.

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