Bankserv keeps up with digital age
Modernising SA’s payments infrastructure to keep it up to speed with the digital economy and promote financial inclusion is to be the focus in 2018 for the continent’s largest payments clearing house, Bankserv Africa
Modernising SA’s payments infrastructure to keep it up to speed with the digital economy and promote financial inclusion is Bankserv Africa’s 2018 focus.
“I hope that by the end of 2018 we have a sense of what technology we’d like to use,” said Martin Grunewald, the acting chief payments officer of the continent’s biggest payments clearing house.
“There’s a definite realisation that SA can’t stay on the same old track,” said Grunewald. Design-phase talks were being held with bank executives and the Payments Association of SA on what the future payments architecture should look like, said Bankserv Africa chief operating officer Emile Burger.
Affordable and accessible payments services are increasingly seen as a precondition to promoting financial inclusion.
In October, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation released open-source software for creating payment platforms that will help unbanked people access digital financial services. Financial inclusion features prominently in the South African Reserve Bank’s Vision 2025, a strategy for the national payments system that recognises the need to rethink the traditional landscape, particularly amid the surge in fintech companies.
Any future system needed to speak to financial inclusion and the fundamental changes taking place in a rapidly digitising economy, said Bankserv Africa CEO Chris Hamilton.
Challenges in the payments system that needed to be tackled included the speed of transactions, data processing and the system’s flexibility and adaptability, said Hamilton. SA’s payments system, the basic architecture for which was laid down in the 1980s, was at one time among the best in the world.
“We need to rethink our payments plumbing, including much greater focus on how to bring underbanked communities into the mainstream economy,” said Hamilton.
As the regional clearing house for the Southern African Development Community, Bankserv Africa would extend its work into the rest of the continent.