How PayInc is architecting South Africa's payments future: Between the Seams with Israel Skosana

South Africa's cash economy costs the country around 30 billion rand a year. That figure, shared by Israel Skosana, Chief Product and Scheme Officer at PayInc, frames much of the conversation in the season one finale of Between the Seams, hosted by Junaid Dadan, President and Co-Founder of Stitch.

Skosana has spent over twenty years in payments, starting as a developer at one of South Africa's major banks before moving into card systems and eventually into the infrastructure side of the industry. That trajectory put him at the centre of some of the country's biggest payments milestones, from the rollout of EMV cards to the arrival of Google Pay and Apple Pay tokenisation. He described the throughline across two decades in one question: what is the payments experience for the customer, and how do you make it more secure, more convenient and more accessible at the same time?

From Bankserv to PayInc: a national utility with a new mandate

The rebrand from Bankserv to PayInc reflects more than a new name. The South African Reserve Bank now holds 50% of the business, with the remaining half split among commercial banks, a structure Skosana called an ideal public-private partnership. The shift aligns with the Reserve Bank's Vision 2025 and Vision 2030 goals around accessibility. As Skosana put it, "payments are not reserved just for banks. Payments are available to all that meet the criteria to be sound payment service providers."

This really outlines PayInc's role: where the organisation historically served the banking sector alone, it now positions itself as the infrastructure layer beneath a much wider set of players, including fintechs, mobile network operators and large retailers.

Why QR standardisation is the unglamorous key to adoption

Much of the episode centres on PayShap, PayInc's real-time payments rail, and the practical barriers to getting more South Africans transacting digitally instead of relying on cash. Skosana pointed to QR code standardisation as a critical, if underappreciated, enabler. South Africa has historically had multiple competing QR formats, and PayInc is working to bring uniformity across the ecosystem so that innovation can happen on top of a shared standard rather than every provider building its own closed loop.

Dadan pushed on why this is relevant when card payments already work well in most formal retail settings. Skosana shared that every adult in South Africa has a mobile phone, but not every adult has a credit card. A ubiquitous QR initiation method closes that gap, letting anyone pay digitally at the point of sale without needing to carry cash or hold a card product.

What's next for PayShap: recurring and variable payments

Dadan raised a theme Stitch hears frequently from merchants and clients: the demand for recurring and variable payment functionality on Request to Pay, rather than today's one-off, fixed-amount model. Skosana confirmed this sits on PayInc's product roadmap, describing a prioritisation exercise to identify which use cases, from subscriptions to on-demand transport to grocery payments, will deliver the broadest value first. 

The parallel to Variable Recurring Payments (VRP) and recurring collections already live in other markets is clear, and Skosana was candid that PayInc is drawing lessons from Brazil, India and Turkey as it builds out the next phase of PayShap.

Card and PayShap as complements, not competitors

Rather than framing card and real-time payments as rivals, Skosana described them as complementary rails suited to different contexts. Card infrastructure remains strong in urban, formal retail environments, while PayShap's near-instant settlement, through which transactions clear in around ten seconds, serves merchants who need certainty for working capital purposes. He also floated the idea of local card schemes, pointing to Verve's dominance in Nigeria as a model South Africa could explore, while stressing that PayInc holds "no holy cows" when it comes to reassessing how things are currently done.

Fraud, data and the AI question

The conversation turned to fraud prevention as a design principle rather than an afterthought. Skosana described PayInc's approach as embedding identity information, historical fraud patterns and mule account data directly into the payment messaging ecosystem, so that decisions on accepting or rejecting a transaction become better informed over time. He was direct about the dual nature of artificial intelligence in this context: the same tools that strengthen fraud detection also raise the stakes when placed in the hands of bad actors, making vetting and scheme governance more important, not less.

Looking further ahead, Skosana touched on what agentic commerce could mean for transaction initiation, while maintaining that any move in that direction has to be matched by equivalent investment in security and governance.

A 2030 outlook built on convergence

Asked to look ahead to 2030, Skosana predicted a convergence of payment rails from the customer's perspective. Users will simply want to pay or receive money, he said, without needing to understand which rail carries the transaction. For PayInc, that means building a roadmap where card, PayShap and emerging methods operate as a unified experience behind the scenes, supported by tokenisation, more payment method choices, and greater use of cloud infrastructure and data-driven decisioning.

Underpinning all of it is the idea that digitising payments does more than reduce friction. For a business like a spaza shop moving from cash to digital transactions, it creates a transaction record that can unlock access to credit, turning a payments upgrade into a genuine growth opportunity.

FAQs

What is PayInc and how is it different from Bankserv?‍

PayInc is the rebranded successor to Bankserv, South Africa's national payments infrastructure provider. The South African Reserve Bank now owns fifty per cent of the business, with commercial banks holding the remainder, reflecting a shift toward open participation from fintechs and other non-bank providers rather than banks alone.

What is PayShap?‍

PayShap is PayInc's real-time payments rail, designed to give South Africans an instant, account-based way to send and receive money. Transactions typically settle within around ten seconds, and PayInc is working to expand its use cases from person-to-person payments toward person-to-merchant transactions.

Why is QR code standardisation important for payments in South Africa?‍

Standardising QR codes allows any payment service provider to build on a shared, uniform specification rather than creating a bespoke closed-loop system. This lowers the barrier for merchants to accept digital payments and gives consumers who lack access to cards a simple way to pay using a mobile phone.

Will PayShap support recurring and variable payments?‍

Yes. PayInc has confirmed that recurring and variable payment functionality is on its product roadmap for Request to Pay, moving beyond today's one-off, fixed-amount transactions to support use cases such as subscriptions and on-demand services.

How is PayInc approaching fraud prevention?‍

PayInc is embedding fraud prevention directly into payment message design, drawing on identity data, historical fraud patterns and mule account information. The organisation is also exploring how artificial intelligence can strengthen authorisation decisions while acknowledging the added risk AI presents when used by bad actors.

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