ASAPP members at their annual strategy meeting held in Sandton on 22 September 2026
The Association of South African Payment Providers (ASAPP) says it is no longer waiting to be asked. It now takes its own evidence-based proposals to regulators.
South Africa’s challenger payment providers used their annual strategy session and media briefing in Sandton, Johannesburg, to show how far they have come in two years: from answering regulators’ consultations to tabling proposals of their own on how the country pays.
The Association of South African Payment Providers (ASAPP) confirmed that its work on interchange fees and PayShap now feeds directly into decisions on the future of the National Payment System. Lincoln Mali, Chief Executive Officer of Lesaka Technologies, was re-elected to lead the Association.
After opening remarks by Bonolo Sekhukhune, Mali gave an overview of ASAPP’s progress and priorities. Four panels followed, each built around one of the Association’s focus areas: market access, infrastructure and payment rails, payment economics, and identity, data, fraud and cyber.
Getting a seat at the table
The clearest win so far is interchange. These are the fees financial institutions pay each other on card transactions, and they are one of the main reasons accepting digital payments costs what it does. ASAPP has submitted two papers on the cost of payments and interchange, looking at the full cost stack, what other countries do, and whether cuts in payment costs actually reach merchants and consumers. The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) has confirmed that this work is being considered in its Interchange Determination Project.
The Association has also sent the SARB’s National Payment System Department a proposal on PayShap merchant acceptance and interoperability. It sets out how existing acquiring and merchant-acceptance infrastructure could carry PayShap to more shops and speed up the use of instant payments.
“Every member of ASAPP chose to build in a market where the incumbents already held the customers, the infrastructure, and the rules. We are challengers,” said Mali. “We challenge commercially, by winning customers with better products, and we challenge in our advocacy, by showing the regulator with evidence where a rule serves the past and what we would support in its place.”
Why cash still matters
ASAPP was formed in early 2024 largely because so much of the economy still runs on cash. FinMark Trust’s FinScope surveys for 2024 and 2025 found that nearly 9.5 million South Africans earn income in the informal economy. While 71% of SMEs receive some digital payments, 89% say their customers still pay in cash, and only 28% have a point-of-sale device. Around five million adults remain unbanked, and about 13 million account holders mainly use their accounts to receive money and withdraw it straight away.
Mali said the gains from moving more of that activity onto digital rails were real but not automatic. “Lower acceptance costs hand margin back to small merchants, a record of digital sales gives a trader a history that a lender can read, and the SARB estimates the gain at up to 0.5% of GDP,” he said. “Those gains are within reach, and none is guaranteed until the reforms are put into practice.”
A rare moment to rewrite the rules
The timing is not lost on the industry. The National Payment System Act is 28 years old, and payment regulation, infrastructure, faster payments, fraud prevention and digital identity are all under review at once. On 2 September, the last of PASA’s functions moved to the SARB and PayInc, changing how the industry is governed.
Over the past year the SARB and the National Payment System Department formally recognised ASAPP as an industry association, giving it a standing role in consultations. It has taken part in the SARB’s Payments Ecosystem Modernisation Programme and NPS Vision 2030+, contributed to the proposed National Payment System Bill, and sat on five of the six National Treasury working groups supporting the National Financial Inclusion Strategy.
Mali was frank about the principle behind the Association’s asks. “Our members spent years asking for the rules to be opened up, and we will not ask for rules that rebuild the barriers we argued against,” he said. “One day a member of this Association will be the incumbent and a business none of us has heard of will be the challenger, and the rules we ask for now should be ones we would accept then.”
What comes next
ASAPP has grown from eight founding members to a mix of fintechs, banks, aggregators, service providers and payment platforms, among them Yoco, iKhokha, Peach Payments, Flash Group, Altron and KPMG. It has also joined the SME Finance Forum.
The next phase will focus on the four areas covered by the panels, with clearer outputs and accountability for delivery. The Association says it will judge its success by practical results: more participants in the system, better interoperability, fairer payment costs, and more digital payments among the merchants and consumers who still depend on cash.
