2025 South Africa Payment Status Insight

2025 Insight into South Africa’s Payment Landscape: Why Do 90% of Chinese-Funded Merchants Choose the POS + Cross-Border Wire Transfer Combination?

Chinese-funded merchants running offline businesses in South Africa have likely encountered scenarios like these: In a restaurant in Johannesburg’s Chinatown, a local customer pulls out their phone and asks, “Can I pay with Capitec’s NFC?”; in a building materials store in Durban, a customer carries cash to settle the payment—this is neither safe nor time-efficient to deposit at the bank. Behind these scenarios lies the dramatic changes in South Africa’s payment market over the past five years, as well as the optimal payment solution for Chinese-funded merchants.

Let’s start with a set of hard data. According to the 2024 Annual Report by the Payments Association of South Africa (PASA), the coverage rate of POS terminals in South Africa has soared from 55% in 2019 to 87% in 2024, among which devices supporting NFC (Near Field Communication) payments account for over 92%. Meanwhile, data from Visa South Africa shows that the frequency of NFC payments by local consumers has tripled compared to 2020, with a single payment amount ranging from 100 to 3,000 South African Rand (approximately CNY 380 to CNY 11,400). This means “cashless payments” have become the standard for mainstream consumption scenarios in South Africa—especially for merchants in catering, retail, and small-scale services. Without a POS terminal, it’s almost equivalent to voluntarily turning away customers.

However, for Chinese-funded merchants, “collecting funds locally” is only the first step; “transferring funds back to China” is the key pain point. Many have firsthand experience of the troubles with traditional cross-border wire transfers: When remitting money from a local South African bank (such as FNB or Absa) to China, you not only need to fill in an 18-digit SWIFT code but also wait 3 to 5 business days for the funds to arrive. Additionally, intermediary banks deduct a handling fee of USD 15 to USD 30. What’s more troublesome is that sometimes funds are temporarily frozen by Chinese banks due to “unclear description of remittance purpose,” requiring supplementary submission of trade contracts, invoices, and other documents—this back-and-forth often delays the process by another week.

It is these pain points that have made the combination of “local POS collection + cross-border direct clearing” a mainstream choice. Take “Huamao Life,” a Chinese-funded supermarket chain operating in South Africa as an example. After accessing Mustang’s POS system, funds from local customers’ credit card or NFC payments enter Mustang’s local South African account on the same day, without going through the “T+1” clearing process of traditional banks. Subsequently, through Mustang’s directly connected domestic clearing network, the South African Rand (ZAR) is converted into Chinese Yuan (CNY), and the funds can be directly transferred to the domestic corporate account or the legal representative’s personal account within 24 hours—with no hidden deductions in between. The supermarket’s financial manager calculated: Previously, they made an average of 5 monthly remittances, with a USD 25 intermediary fee per transaction. Now, with this combination, they save USD 125 per month, and the fund arrival time has been shortened from an average of 4 days to 1 day, increasing the cash flow turnover efficiency by 3 times.

Notably, merchants in different cities can also adjust their strategies based on local characteristics: Merchants in Cape Town’s tourist areas, which see many foreign visitors, will additionally enable the foreign currency POS function supporting Visa and MasterCard; building materials merchants in Pretoria, where per-transaction amounts are high (mostly over 100,000 Rand), will pair with Mustang’s “EFT Instant Transfer” function—customers transfer funds directly to the merchant’s local EFT account via online banking, with funds arriving in real time, and the system automatically generates compliant payment vouchers to avoid subsequent reconciliation troubles.

2025 Insight into South Africa’s Payment Landscape: Why Do 90% of Chinese-Funded Merchants Choose the POS + Cross-Border Wire Transfer Combination?

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