Improving South Africa’s Payments Infrastructure
BankservAfrica has recognised the need for significant improvement of South Africa’s payments infrastructure. The focus of BankservAfrica for 2018 will be keeping South Africa’s payments infrastructure in-line with the advancing of a digital economy and to promote financial inclusion.
According to Emile Burger, the COO of BankservAfrica, “Design-phase talks were being held with bank executives and the Payments Association of South Africa on what the future payments architecture should look like.” The consensus is that it should be affordable and easily accessible if it is to promote financial inclusion.
An open-source software released by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation could provide assistance in the quest to improve payments infrastructure. The software creates a platform for payments and for helping unbanked people to access financial services.
According to Chris Hamilton, CEO of BankservAfrica, challenges that need to be tackled by any new payments infrastructure include the speed of transactions, data processing, the system’s flexibility and adaptability. BankservAfrica, the regional clearing house for the Southern African Development Community, plans to extend this initiative to the rest of the African continent as well.