The SA Reserve Bank (SARB) has asked the Competition Commission to look into the fees South African banks are charging customers to use PayShap, the country’s first interoperable, real-time payments system, to determine if they're anti-competitive.
PayShap allows customers of participating banks to make virtually instant, real-time transfers of up to R3 000 - even if they are clients of different banks - and is meant to be an evolution from real-time clearing (RTC), the payment rail that facilitates electronic fund transfers (EFTs).
RTC was first deployed in 1997 and was initially intended for large, urgent transactions rather than the smaller person-to-person transfers facilitated by PayShap.