{"id":779372,"date":"2024-07-02T18:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=779372"},"modified":"2024-07-03T13:41:29","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T11:41:29","slug":"big-change-to-eft-payments-from-south-african-banks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/779372\/big-change-to-eft-payments-from-south-african-banks\/","title":{"rendered":"Big change to EFT payments from South African banks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South African banks will implement a significant change to domestic electronic funds transfer (EFT) between South Africa, Lesotho, Eswatini, and Namibia in September 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Common Monetary Area (CMA) regulators decided to discontinue processing electronic EFT payments and collections within the CMA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Common Monetary Area comprises South Africa and its three neighbours, Namibia, Lesotho, and Eswatini.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CMA\u2019s decision means South African account holders can no longer make EFT payments to account holders in other CMA countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They will also not be allowed to receive EFT payments from other CMA countries unless they are initiated on a global banking channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before this restriction, South African account holders could make EFT payments to Lesotho, Eswatini, and Namibian accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African banks initially warned their account holders that the regulatory changes would start to be applied in April 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

15 April 2024 was set to be the final day of processing domestic EFT, including credit payments and EFT debit collections, to and from Namibia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the Bank of Namibia extended the effective date to 30 September 2024. As such, regulators have decided to extend this deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final day of processing domestic EFT, including credit payments and EFT debit collections, to and from Lesotho and Eswatini, is 9 September 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nedbank explained that people making and receiving payments or collections to beneficiaries in a CMA country after September 2024 could not use EFT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can use our global payment platform, global transactions on the Nedbank Business Hub, or our global host-to-host solution to make and receive these payments,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It further warned that debit order collection processing will only be supported in-country and not between countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDebit orders collected from accounts within the CMA will have to be initiated from an account domiciled in Namibia, Lesotho or Eswatini,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will require access to an in-country banking service to submit debit order collections and the receivables and billing processing accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alternatively, these debtors can initiate payments from the respective CMA countries to you using a cross-border service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Standard Bank said all payment flows between countries within the CMA will be done via the Swift platform and will no longer be processed via EFT rails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, Swift (the Global Payment Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), must be used to initiate all cross-border payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absa said regulators have instructed banks to discontinue processing debit and credit EFT payments to Namibia. Credit and debit EFT payments will also be discontinued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you want to continue making payments to Namibia, you can use the Swift service available through our relationship banking, international banking and foreign exchange teams,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe understand that these changes may affect your banking experience, and we are committed to assisting you through this transition.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This change is set to be disruptive for many businesses and families in the Southern African region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cross-border payments via Swift will take more time because of the increased checks and controls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will add a significant amount of overhead to people or businesses who want to send money to Lesotho, Eswatini, and Namibia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also not clear what impact it will have on online payment systems which use EFT as a channel for online shopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although online shops like Takealot do not ship to neighbouring countries, people in Lesotho, Eswatini, and Namibia subscribe to South African services via EFT payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These new regulations are set to disrupt these EFT payments. The same goes for debit orders for business services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 2023 Finmark Trust study found that many families in the region depend on income received via cross-border remittance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCross-border remittances provide these people access to essential services and contribute to micro-economies in many SADC communities,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, formal outbound remittances from South Africa via authorized dealers totalled nearly $1 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Read: R52 million pay cut for CEO of South Africa\u2019s most exclusive bank<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South African banks will implement a significant change to domestic electronic funds transfer (EFT) payments in September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":695271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[20105,20104,20106,1419,20107,1799,853,499],"class_list":["post-779372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-common-monetary-area-cma","tag-eft","tag-eswatini","tag-lesotho","tag-namibia","tag-nedbank","tag-south-africa","tag-standard-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779372"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780714,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779372\/revisions\/780714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}