South African Payments Change Log

South African payments have changed substantially over the past few years: legacy debit order types have been retired, DebiCheck and registered mandates have replaced them, and instant payments have arrived through PayShap. This page keeps a running, reverse-chronological log of the milestones that matter to businesses collecting and making payments.

Use it to understand why older articles or bank documents reference systems that no longer exist, and what is on the horizon. For background on the system itself, see the South African national payment system, or return to the Reference hub.

2024

• PayShap Request to Pay launched, allowing a business or person to send a payment request that the payer approves in their banking app, extending PayShap beyond simple push payments. See ShapIDs and Request to Pay.
• PayShap adoption continued to grow, with more banks participating and transaction limits and use cases expanding.
• ISO 20022 adoption progressed across the industry, aligning South African high-value and cross-border payment messaging with the international standard as SWIFT and domestic systems migrate.

2023

• PayShap launched in March 2023, introducing low-value instant payments between participating banks, including payments addressed to a ShapID proxy such as a cellphone number. See PayShap.
• Debit order dispute rules continued to be refined, strengthening the distinction between authenticated (DebiCheck) collections, registered mandates and ordinary EFT debit orders in how disputes are handled. See debit order disputes and stop payments.

2022

• Registered Mandate Service (RMS) usage grew as an alternative for collections where DebiCheck authentication is impractical, giving banks visibility of mandates without payer authentication. See what is a registered mandate.
• DebiCheck bedding-down period, with banks and collectors refining authentication success rates, tracking behaviour and reason code handling after the full rollout.

2021

• NAEDO and AEDO were retired at the end of October 2021. The legacy early debit order types were switched off, completing the migration of early-window collections to DebiCheck. Existing NAEDO/AEDO mandates were migrated under industry rules. See migrated NAEDO and AEDO mandates.
• DebiCheck rollout completed, making authenticated collections fully operational across participating banks after a phased implementation directed by the SARB. See how DebiCheck works.

Earlier

• DebiCheck phased rollout ran over several years before 2021, with banks progressively enabling mandate authentication and collectors migrating from NAEDO.
• Real-time clearing (RTC) availability expanded over time, from limited operating hours to broad daily availability, making once-off instant credits a practical option well before PayShap.
• Screen-scraping "instant EFT" services came under industry scrutiny, with the SARB and banks raising concerns about services that log into customers' bank accounts on their behalf; this scrutiny has encouraged a shift toward PayShap and safer, API-based alternatives. See instant EFT and open banking.

Looking ahead

The SARB's payments modernisation agenda continues, including the transition of PASA's functions to a new payments industry body, broader non-bank participation in the payment system, and further ISO 20022 migration. Details and dates are confirmed by the SARB and industry bodies as programmes progress.

This change log is updated periodically as notable industry changes take effect. If a change affects how your collections or payments behave, we cover the practical detail in the relevant topic section of this Knowledge Centre.