PASA’s Functions Have Fully Transferred to PayInc and SARB. Here Is What Changed
On 4 June 2026, the South African Reserve Bank issued the directive that started the process. On 2 September 2026, that process finished. The functions the Payments Association of South Africa held for nearly thirty years now sit with PayInc and the SARB.
If your business read the June announcement, filed it under “later,” and moved on, this is later. The transition is no longer a plan. It is the current structure of South Africa’s national payment system, and it is worth twenty minutes of your finance team’s time to check whether your internal documentation still reflects it.
By the Paysoft Editorial Team
What Actually Happened Between August and September
The transition ran in two stages. From 11 August 2026, the SARB took direct control of PASA’s regulatory and oversight functions, along with the staff and intellectual property attached to them. This covers authorisation, payment standards, card interoperability, and system-wide risk management.
The second stage completed on 2 September 2026. The remaining functions, the ones tied to how South Africans actually collect and move money day to day, transferred to PayInc. This includes DebiCheck, EFT credits and debits, real-time clearing, and the PayShap scheme.
PASA itself has not simply vanished. Its recognition as a payment system management body was withdrawn, and its work is now carried by two organisations with clearer, narrower mandates. For businesses that build payment processes on top of the national payment system, the practical difference is who you now look to for guidance on each part of it.
Who Is Responsible for What, Now
This is the part worth pinning to a whiteboard. Two organisations, two different jobs:
PayInc runs the schemes your business actually touches. If a question concerns how a debit order clears, how a DebiCheck mandate behaves, or how PayShap transactions move between banks, PayInc is now the source.
The SARB regulates the system those schemes operate inside. Authorisation of payment providers, card interoperability rules, and system-wide risk sit with the central bank directly, not with an industry association.
If your compliance documentation, onboarding material, or website still names PASA as the body governing any of this, it is describing a structure that stopped existing on 2 September.
Why This Matters More for Collections Than People Realise
Collections is where this transition has the most day-to-day weight, and it is also where we see the most outdated guidance still circulating.
DebiCheck’s 10 calendar day recovery window, the 60-calendar day dispute period introduced in April, and the automatic mandate suspension after 7 consecutive unsuccessful collections all sit within rules now administered by PayInc, not PASA. None of the mechanics changed on 2 September. What changed is who owns the rulebook.
There is a second, quieter gap worth closing while you are checking this. Full Credit Tracking and Minimal Credit Tracking are not the same setting with different names. Full Credit Tracking retries a failed DebiCheck or Registered Mandate collection every time a credit event happens on the customer’s account. Minimal Credit Tracking retries a Registered Mandate collection twice a day, once in the early window and again later that same day, regardless of when funds actually land. Both run within the same 10 calendar day window, but a business on the wrong setting is leaving recoverable revenue on the table without knowing why.
What Has Not Changed
Card payments, EFTs, debit orders, PayShap transfers, and ATM withdrawals all continue exactly as before. The SARB was explicit about this throughout the transition, and it holds. This is a governance change, not an operational one. Nobody’s integration broke on 2 September.
What did not change either: the fundamentals of how debit order collections work, how real-time payments clear through PayShap, or how a DebiCheck mandate is authenticated. Those mechanics are governed by PayInc now instead of PASA, but the rules businesses need to follow are the same rules.
What to Check in Your Own Business
Three places outdated references tend to hide, worth a quick pass this week:
Your compliance and onboarding documentation, anywhere it names the body governing DebiCheck, EFTs, or PayShap.
Any vendor or provider guidance you rely on for debit order or payment processing rules. If it was written before August 2026, verify it against PayInc’s own communications before you act on it.
Internal training material for finance and collections staff, particularly anything explaining mandate suspension, dispute windows, or recovery periods.
Getting This Right
We first covered this transition back in June, when the SARB’s directive was announced. That piece is still accurate on the mechanics. This one exists because the mechanics are no longer theoretical. They are the system your business is operating inside today.
Paysoft’s own compliance documentation has been reviewed and aligned to the new structure. If you would like a second set of eyes on whether your business’s payment documentation still holds up, that is a conversation worth having before it becomes a bigger one.
Book a demo to see how Paysoft’s Collections and Payments platforms stay aligned to the current national payment system structure, not the one that existed six months ago.