Independent comparisons of every payment gateway available to South Africans: effective
rates, settlement times and the fees the pricing pages don't lead with.
≈ R32 434 lost a yearthe cheapest rail at these numbers
A R650 basket, R150 000 a month, 3% refunded, 4 payout runs, incl 15% VAT. Indicative until re-verified; the chargeback line is an editorial estimate, not a published fee. Open these numbers in the full calculator →
8 providers tracked, 13 rails modelled
Rates ex VAT unless a figure says otherwise
No provider owns us, and nothing is ranked for pay
Every fee carries the date we verified it
Five ways money reaches you
Not every rail costs the same.
A gateway is a bundle of rails, and they are priced very differently. The cheapest checkout is usually the one that offers more than cards.
Cards
Visa and Mastercard still take most online payments, and every gateway here processes them. They are also the only rail that can be charged back.
The customer pays straight from their bank at checkout. Cheaper than cards almost everywhere, settles in real time, and cannot be reversed by a chargeback.
Real-time bank payments by proxy ID, plus SnapScan and Zapper at the counter. Merchant pricing is set per provider rather than published as a rate card.
Payflex, PayJustNow, Float and MoreTyme lift conversion on bigger baskets, and the provider carries the credit risk. You pay for that in the merchant fee.
5.5% + R2.00 via MoreTyme · highest here
MoreTyme merchant fee, published by PayFast
Read off the provider's own published pricing page.
Local gateways settle in rand only. Selling abroad or invoicing a foreign client means a second set of tools, and a second set of fees on the way home.
The card and instant EFT figures span every rail this site models, ex VAT, computed from the
same engine as the calculator. The BNPL figure is what PayFast
publishes for MoreTyme on its own fees page: no BNPL provider publishes a merchant rate
directly. PayShap, QR and cross-border pricing is set per provider or per corridor, so those
two cards carry no rate rather than a borrowed one.
The tool nobody else built
Headline rates lie. Effective rates don't.
Set your basket and your monthly volume. We add up everything each provider quietly takes per R100, then rank them by what actually reaches your account.
R650
R150 000
Ozow pay-by-bankCheapestPay-by-bank · no chargebacks
R2 703/mo
1.80% effective · keeps R98,20/R100
Peach Pay by BankPay by Bank · no chargebacks
R3 075/mo
2.05% effective · keeps R97,95/R100
Paystack EFTEFT · no chargebacks
R3 553/mo
2.37% effective · keeps R97,63/R100
Stitch Capitec PayCapitec Pay · no chargebacks
R3 563/mo
2.38% effective · keeps R97,62/R100
iKhokha Instant EFTInstant EFT · no chargebacks
R3 563/mo
2.38% effective · keeps R97,62/R100
PayUNo published pricing
PayU publishes no rates, fees or pricing terms for South Africa. Its global fees-by-country page covers Colombia, Peru and Chile only.
Ranked on the same engine as the full calculator (incl 15% VAT), holding refunds at 3% and payouts at 4 runs a month. 8 further rails sit below these five. The full tool opens those two inputs and shows the receipt behind the cheapest option, including the chargeback provision, which is an editorial estimate rather than a published figure. Open the full calculator →
Local gateways, side by side
Every gateway, one honest table.
The five cheapest providers at our standard scenario. The full table carries all 8, with settlement, watch-outs and the date each figure was verified.
The cheapest rate is not always the right pick. These are the answers our research lands on for the five situations merchants ask about most, with the effective rate computed for each.
I sell physical products on WooCommerce or Shopify.
Yoco
keeps R96,95 per R100 · 3.05% effective
At R450 a basket and R60 000 a month, 3% refunded, incl 15% VAT.
Yoco is the simplest place to start: no monthly fee, no fixed fee per transaction, and one account covering online and in-person. PayFast is the alternative when you would rather have every payment method a shopper might reach for.
Alongside it
PayFast, the widest method coverage, if reach matters more than rate
Ozow, add the bank rail once volume justifies a second integration
On Shopify, the platform adds its own 0.6% to 2.0% third-party gateway fee on top of whatever your gateway charges. That stacking is what pushes real cost toward 4% to 5.5%, and no gateway choice removes it.
At R350 a basket and R200 000 a month, 2% refunded, incl 15% VAT.
Recurring billing is a tokenisation problem before it is a rate problem. Peach has the most mature card-on-file and recurring engine of the local gateways, plus 3-D Secure 2 on the retry path, which is what keeps a subscription book from leaking.
Alongside it
Paystack, a capable subscriptions API with better docs
Stitch, debit orders, where fixed monthly collections run at scale
Peach prices toward larger merchants and much of its pricing is plan-based or quoted rather than published. Get a written quote before you build against it, and re-check the rate here against what you are actually offered.
I am writing the checkout myself, in React or Next.js.
Paystack
keeps R96,38 per R100 · 3.62% effective
At R600 a basket and R150 000 a month, 2% refunded, incl 15% VAT.
Paystack has the popup checkout that keeps the buyer on your page, signed webhooks, honest failure diagnostics and the best documentation in the market. It is a Stripe subsidiary, which is as close to Stripe as a South African entity gets.
Alongside it
Stitch Express, enterprise rails self-serve, with native BNPL since 2026
The 48-hour chargeback window auto-accepts a dispute you miss, which is short by industry standards. An escalated arbitration is billed in dollars, up to $520 on Mastercard and $600 on Visa. Confirm your rate in writing at onboarding.
At R8 000 a basket and R400 000 a month, 1% refunded, incl 15% VAT.
On a large basket the percentage is the whole cost, and the bank rail undercuts every card rate here. It also settles in real time and cannot be charged back, which removes the single largest risk on a high-value order.
Alongside it
Stitch, pay-by-bank with enterprise orchestration behind it
Peach, Pay by Bank alongside a card rail on one contract
Pay-by-bank is not a complete checkout on its own. Some customers will only pay by card, so budget for a card rail beside it and expect that rail to cost more per rand.
My customers are overseas and pay in dollars or euros.
Wise
not a rand rail, so not modelled here
For invoicing foreign clients directly, Wise gives you real receiving details in USD, EUR and GBP at close to the mid-market rate. If you sell software rather than time, a merchant of record is the pattern that removes the multi-jurisdiction tax problem instead of routing around it.
Alongside it
Paystack, keep it for the rand side of the business
Paddle, a merchant of record handles global VAT for digital goods
Payoneer, where a marketplace dictates the rail
Stripe does not onboard South African entities directly, whatever an aggregator article tells you. Incorporating abroad to reach it engages SARB exchange control and SARS residency rules, so take professional advice before you build a business on it.
Picks come from our research on which provider suits which situation, not from the ranking:
the calculator sorts on price alone and will sometimes disagree, which
is the point of showing both. Every rate here is the engine's, computed at the scenario printed
on each card.
Four things that cost merchants money
Things everyone gets wrong.
Stripe works in South Africa.
Not for a South African registered business. Stripe lists South Africa as an extended-network country served through Paystack, the subsidiary it acquired in 2020, and there is no direct South African onboarding. The three real routes are Paystack locally, a foreign entity such as a UK Ltd or US LLC running Stripe, or a merchant of record. The middle route engages SARB exchange control and SARS tax residency rules, so it needs professional advice rather than a blog post.
The rate on the pricing page is the rate you pay.
Every rate published by a South African gateway, and every rate on this site unless a figure says otherwise, is quoted excluding VAT. Add 15% to model what actually leaves your account. On top of that sit fixed per-transaction fees, per-transaction minimums, payout fees and refund losses, none of which appear in the headline percentage. That gap between the advertised rate and the effective rate is the reason the calculator on this site exists.
If you refund a sale, you get the fee back.
Almost never. Most gateways keep the original processing fee when you refund a customer, and several charge a further fee to process the refund itself. A R500 sale refunded in full can still cost you R15 to R20 with nothing to show for it. At a 3% refund rate this quietly moves the ranking between providers, which is why the calculator treats refund losses as a first-class input rather than a footnote.
Shopify Payments will sort out my fees.
Shopify Payments is not available in South Africa. Every South African Shopify merchant runs a third-party gateway and pays Shopify an additional 0.6% to 2.0% transaction fee on top of that gateway's own rate, purely for not using Shopify Payments. The stacked cost lands around 4% to 5.5%. Choosing a cheaper gateway reduces one layer of that, and nothing removes the other.
Beyond the rand
Selling past the border changes the maths.
Local gateways settle in rand only. The moment you sell into Lagos or invoice a client in London, you are on someone else's rails, at someone else's rates.
The figures on those two pages are directional, not verified. They are third-party,
non-South-African and corridor-dependent, so they were never part of the pricing pass behind
the rest of this site and they carry no Verified badge anywhere.
Evergreen, updated as it moves
The rules are changing in your favour.
The SARB is opening clearing and settlement to non-bank PSPs. More providers, lower costs and new payment methods, from 2026 onward.
15 Jun 2026
Authorisation Framework, comment closed
Draft exemption notices and a revised activity-based framework that lets non-bank payment institutions join clearing and settlement, either bank-sponsored or authorised in their own right. For merchants: the foundation for cheaper, more capable fintech providers.
still ahead
2026 to 2027
QR+ interoperability standard
A single QR standard to end fragmentation between SnapScan, Zapper and bank wallets. For merchants: one QR code any customer can scan, which should reshape the QR segment.
2026 to 2028
Non-bank PSPs hold their own licences
Fintechs that today ride on bank sponsorship gain direct authorisation. For merchants: expect new entrants, sharper pricing and faster settlement as competition increases.
PayFast, the widest method coverage, if reach matters more than rate 
Ozow, add the bank rail once volume justifies a second integration 
