Population
65.6M
Online population
45.3M
Currency
ZAR
Population - 65.6M
In late 2025, 69.9% of South Africa’s population lived in urban centres, whereas 30.1% lived in rural areas.
Internet penetration - 79.6%
There were 51.7 million internet users in South Africa at the start of 2025.
In 2026, South Africa’s financial sector is anchored by large traditional banks, alongside Capitec — a low-cost bank that has been disrupting the sector since 2001 with simpler, cheaper banking — and a newer generation of digital-first challengers. Around them, a broad fintech ecosystem has developed in payments, merchant services, lending and financial infrastructure.
Yet the country has an unusual contradiction: despite widespread access to bank accounts and sophisticated financial services, cash remains the most common way to pay, particularly for low-value transactions and in the informal economy. This has made cheaper and easier digital payments a major area of innovation, from fintechs helping small merchants accept cards or account-to-account payments to PayShap, the bank-connected instant-payment system launched in 2023.
In 2026, the bigger change is happening underneath these products**.** The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is taking a more active role in modernising retail payments. It has chosen a public-private model: it has taken a stake in PayInc, the company that operates much of the country’s interbank payment infrastructure, and is turning it into a national payments utility that can serve banks, fintechs and other non-bank providers.
Regulatory reforms are being developed in parallel to let non-banks participate more directly in activities such as acquiring, e-money and payment clearing, while work on interoperable QR payments and open banking continues.
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An Unusual Way to Modernise Payments
Instead of building its own Pix, the central bank (SARB) bought 50% BankservAfrica, the company running most of the country’s payment infrastructure, and renamed it PayInc. PayInc operates PayShap, the instant payment system, and other interbank infrastructure. The plan is to open it beyond banks to give fintechs and other payment providers more direct access. ****The state helps build the rails. The private sector competes for what happens on them.
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South Africa’s banking market is dominated by Standard Bank, FNB (part of FirstRand), Absa and Nedbank, four large universal banks offering everything from everyday accounts to corporate and investment banking.These traditional giants have invested heavily in mobile banking, payments and digital services of their own.
Capitec, a “young bank” launched in 2001 has grown into the country’s largest bank by customer numbers, with 26 million active clients in 2026.