BREAKING: South Africa’s ACH, BankservAfrica rebrands to PayInc SA

BankservAfrica, South Africa’s core interbank payments operator, has rebranded to PayInc (SA).

Founded in 1972, BankservAfrica is the country’s automated clearing house, processing billions of transactions annually on behalf of banks, businesses, and consumers. It is owned by South Africa’s four largest banks and a consortium of smaller banks, and regulated by the Payments Association of South Africa (PASA) and the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).

With the rebrand, PayInc SA says it will continue to provide the infrastructure for electronic funds transfers (EFTs), which support salary payments, bills, and interbank transfers. It will also maintain its role in card payments, ensuring debit and credit transactions are processed between banks. In addition, PayInc supports newer services, such as PayShap, South Africa’s rapid payments platform for low-value, real-time transfers, designed to promote financial inclusion. At the same time, the company is positioning itself as a more modern and purpose-driven payments provider.

“Our mission is to connect people, businesses, and economies through secure, efficient and inclusive digital payments infrastructure and be a catalyst for financial inclusion and economic growth,” PayInc says.

The move to PayInc signals continuity with BankservAfrica’s 53-year legacy, but also an effort to align with the changing demands of South Africa’s digital payments landscape.

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How does PayInc compare in Africa and beyond

PayInc SA plays a similar role in South Africa to Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) Plc, which was founded in 1993 and operates the country’s central switch and settlement services, including instant payments (NIP). Like PayInc, NIBSS is also owned by a consortium of commercial banks in Nigeria alongside the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

In the UK, the equivalent is Pay.UK (formerly known as New Payment System Operator), which was established in 2017, runs Faster Payments (real-time account-to-account transfers), BACS (Bankers’ Automated Clearing System), and cheque clearing.

Back in West Africa, there is the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) Limited. Their new CEO, Clara Arthur, starts next Monday, after 13 years under Archie Hesse.

These operators are increasingly shifting from being background clearing houses to more visible enablers of digital economies, supporting real-time payments, fintech innovation, and financial inclusion.

As of press time, the websites of BankservAfrica and PayInc were inaccessible, perhaps due to migration outages.

This is a developing story.