This is one of the findings of The future of travel in South Africa: How travellers discover, book and pay, commissioned by leading African payment service provider Peach Payments and South Africa’s fastest-growing flexible payment provider PayJustNow. Conducted by Phocuswright, the research involved one-on-one interviews with key executives in the travel and tourism sector about the use of online payment technologies by South African consumers.

Digital wallets drive rapid checkouts

Digital wallets are rapidly becoming the preferred choice for South Africans, with nearly 4 in 10 (39%) citing them as the fastest payment option in research by Visa. Flight booking company Travelwings, for instance, found that adding Apple Pay and Google Pay led to a “sudden uptick in transactions”, highlighting that removing friction at the point of purchase is key to driving conversion.

“The rapidly expanding Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) sector is increasingly playing the same role,”

says Daniel Hawkins, Executive Head of Marketing at PayJustNow

Another finding is that industry leaders like Travelstart increased their BNPL share from 3% to 6% in just one year.

“BNPL is playing a critical role in boosting loyalty and expanding access to more travellers who want cashflow-friendly payment options to secure their purchase,”

says Daniel Hawkins

BNPL boosts loyalty and expands access

Other industry experts polled in the research note that mobile money is essential because it allows customers to interact online rather than travelling long distances to physical shops to pay. Africa is the global epicentre for mobile money, accounting for 74% of all mobile money transactions worldwide. Market leaders like M-Pesa now have over 40 million users in Kenya alone, providing a vital bridge for consumers who prefer digital balances over physical cash.

“As travel demand evolves in South Africa, payments will be a key area of focus for companies looking to improve conversion and better serve customer needs. Success will depend less on any single payment method and more on reducing friction across the booking process,”

says Mitra Sorrells, SVP content at Phocuswright

Mobile money bridges the gap for digital balances

Adding diverse payment options may attract more consumers, but it presents challenges for merchants. Travel finance teams describe managing multiple payment providers as a “nightmare” that often requires excessive headcount to manage. Disparate data formats and varying commission rates make automated reconciliation nearly impossible for scaling businesses. The research identified that merchants solve this through sophisticated payment orchestration and recon APIs from payment service providers.

“These solutions talk to multiple backend providers to ensure the settlement process is seamless,”

says Peach Payments CEO Rahul Jain.

Solving the merchant ‘nightmare’ of multiple integrations

Digital wallets pose a different challenge – travel providers say international settlements for these wallets can lead to costly exchange rate conversions for the buyer. 

Another challenge for international transactions is that many fail in South Africa due to 3D Secure (3DS) technicalities. This may force consumers to attempt payments multiple times, increasing frustration. Researchers suggest that merchants look for PSPs that manage real-time risk checking, are PCI DSS Level 1 certified and optimise for African banking rails to ensure high authorisation rates and local settlement.

The full research findings are being made available to the travel industry to assist merchants in optimising their websites, Jain says. The full research report is also available for download at here.

About Phocuswright

Phocuswright is the travel industry research authority on how travellers, suppliers, and intermediaries connect. For over two decades, the company has delivered independent, objective research and data to the global travel, tourism, and hospitality industry. Phocuswright provides actionable insights to travel executives through syndicated research, custom research, and highly targeted industry events. To foster a global community, Phocuswright also produces several high-profile conferences connecting innovators, executives, and investors. Phocuswright is a wholly owned subsidiary of Northstar Travel Group. For more information, visit www.phocuswright.com.

About PayJustNow

PayJustNow is an innovative payment platform, offering flexible retail payment options that serve an audience of over 3.5 million customers and 3,000 directly integrated merchants. The platform is changing the face of South Africa’s retail landscape, delivering convenience and accessibility to the consumer, while driving retail sales and improving customer retention for the merchant. The company has an 80% repeat customer rate and is signing on 100,000 new customers a month. PayJustNow is backed by fintech giant Weaver Fintech, and incorporated into its ecosystem of digital financial services, embedded finance, and payments. For more information visit www.payjustnow.com.

South African businesses have become exceptionally disciplined about inbound payments.

• Conversion rates are optimised.
• Checkout friction is reduced.
• Fraud on collections is actively managed.

Leadership teams can quote authorisation rates to the decimal point. But ask those same teams about outbound money movement – and the answers become less precise.

• What is your failed payout rate?
• How many payments are rejected each month due to incorrect bank details?
• How much time is spent reversing and reprocessing disbursements?

For many organisations, payouts remain a blind spot.

The Hidden Risk in Outbound Payments

Every successful pay-in creates a payout obligation somewhere downstream:

• Refunds
• Supplier settlements
• Gig worker earnings
• Insurance claims
• Commission payments

As South Africa’s digital economy expands, payout volumes are increasing rapidly across retail, fintech, gaming, insurance and marketplace platforms.

At the same time, fraud linked to bank account manipulation continues to rise. And yet many businesses still rely on:

• Manual CSV or XLSX uploads
• Separate payout portals
• Post-payment reconciliation
• Reactive failure management

When beneficiary bank details are incorrect — or worse, manipulated — the failure is only discovered after funds have already moved.

By then, the operational cost has already compounded.

Bank Verification: The Control Layer Payouts Have Been Missing

Real-Time Clearance Payouts are powerful. But real-time without verification simply moves risk faster.

That’s where Bank Verification changes the standard.

With Real-Time Clearance Payouts and integrated Bank Verification, beneficiary details are validated against verified banking records before funds are released. Account numbers are matched, ownership is confirmed, and mismatches are flagged upfront.

Instead of discovering an error after a failed disbursement, businesses prevent the failure before it happens.

This delivers three critical advantages:

1. Reduced Fraud Exposure

Internal account manipulation and external supplier detail fraud are the most common forms of business payment attacks. Verifying bank ownership details before release dramatically reduces the risk of funds being sent to fraudulent accounts.

2. Fewer Failed Disbursements

Incorrect account details are the leading cause of payout failure and operational friction. Pre-validation improves first-time success rates while significantly reducing the administrative burden of reversal costs.

3. Operational Certainty

Finance teams gain complete control over outbound money movement. Payouts become measurable, predictable and auditable instead of reactive. Bank verification transforms payouts from a basic transaction process into a strategic, risk-managed financial function.

Real-Time, Without Fragmentation

Peach Payments’ Real-Time Clearance Payouts with Bank Verification are managed through a single API integration. This enables:

• Bulk beneficiary uploads
• Bank account validation
• Instant clearance
• Consolidated reconciliation

Payouts move away from risky, error-prone spreadsheets and disconnected workarounds into a fully structured, automated, and completely observable financial system.

Proof in Practice: Cadana Pay

For Cadana Pay – a global payroll infrastructure provider operating across more than 100 countries -payout precision is fundamental.

After implementing Real-Time Clearance Payouts, Cadana Pay reported:

• 50–55% cost savings on fees
• Near-instant clearance, reducing settlement times from days to hours
• 75% time savings through improved turnaround
• Simplified reconciliation via API integration

Operational efficiency is vital at scale, and verification serves as the essential control layer to preserve it.

From Speed to Standard

Speed alone is no longer the primary differentiator in modern finance. Integrating bank verification elevates payouts from a simple operational afterthought to a critical strategic control point for the business.

As South Africa’s digital economy matures and scales, the businesses that apply the same security rigour to outbound payments as they do to incoming collections will significantly reduce fraud exposure, lower operational costs, and strengthen trust across their entire ecosystems.

Real-time is powerful.

Real-time and verified is the new standard.

For more info on RTC Payouts with Bank Verification, visit this page 

.<\/p>]]> https://www.peachpayments.com/scale/peach-payments-and-yoyo-add-bank-card-linked-loyalty-to-digit-pro-pos-device/ Tue, 03 Mar 2026 08:38:35 +0000 https://www.peachpayments.com/?p=17412

Yoyo Rewards Partnership

African payment solution provider Peach Payments has partnered with Yoyo to add automatic cashback loyalty rewards to its Digit Pro POS device.

The move expands the Digit Pro’s capabilities, which already include alternative and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) payment methods, system integration, and customised checkout screens.

Says Rahul Jain, Peach Payments founder and CEO: “This solution is built for merchants who want to drive repeat visits that increase customer lifetime value. It is ideal for restaurants, cafés, service centres and retail stores, which consumers visit regularly. The fact that they can earn and burn their rewards by simply paying for their purchases with their regular credit or debit card makes it an easy option for both consumers and merchants. ”

How to Earn Yoyo Rewards

Customers earn loyalty directly on the Digit Pro when they pay with a bank card, ApplePay or Google Pay. No separate apps, QR codes or additional hardware are needed.  

Yoyo’s bank card linked loyalty product launched in Platō Coffee shops in 2025, and was readily adopted by customers. Shoppers favoured their bank card as a loyalty identifier to minimise friction at checkout. 

“Our data shows that loyalty fundamentally shifts customer behaviour. Members visit up to 40% more frequently and are 70% less likely to churn. When loyalty is embedded directly into the payment flow, merchants move beyond short-term tactics to building measurable, long-term lifetime value,” says Bevan Ducasse, CEO of Yoyo.

Historically, loyalty programmes lived across the road from the payment process. Consumers had to swipe a loyalty card or scan an app, and merchants had to access a separate loyalty system to let customers earn their rewards. 

How it works

With this new approach, the checkout is the trigger and the customer earns their loyalty simply by paying. With loyalty converging into the payment process, the POS terminal becomes a primary channel for customer engagement, measurement and repeat behaviour. 

Peach Payments’ partnership with Yoyo moves this loyalty model from an early launch into real distribution.

Peach Payments has tested the loyalty solution over the past few months with three coffee shop chains. It is now being rolled out to Peach Payments merchants who use a Peach Payments POS device to accept payments.

To learn more about Yoyo Rewards, visit this page

.<\/p>]]> https://www.peachpayments.com/scale/black-friday-up-93-over-2024-r186bn-processed/ Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:01:19 +0000 https://www.peachpayments.com/?p=14792 Peach Payments saw a 93% increase in rand value processed from Black Friday to Cyber Monday, compared to 2024.

“Over the four-day weekend we processed more than 2,69 million transactions, to a total value of more than R1,86bn,” says Rahul Jain, CEO and cofounder.

Largest individual transaction on Black Friday 2025

The largest individual transaction Peach Payments processed on Black Friday was for R1,09m in the Travel & Accommodation industry.

The Retail industry alone grew its share of online sales over the four-day Black Friday weekend by 154% from last year, the company adds.

This comes against the backdrop of a 109% overall growth in rand value processed via the payment service provider’s platform in the month of November (“Black November”) compared to November 2024.

“We continue to see deals being pulled in across the whole of November, not just the BFCM weekend,” Jain comments. “We also continue to see a shift to online spending rather than in physical stores.”

Industry sector growth Black Friday 2025

Most industry sectors did well over the weekend, with Financial Services up 98%, Leisure & Entertainment up 48% and Travel & Accommodation up 35%.

“While the vast majority of transactions were card payments, consumers are adopting a variety of new payment methods,” comments Jain.

The growth of BNPL on Black Friday 2025

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) payments processed by Peach Payments over the weekend grew by 753% in rand value from 2024.

ApplePay also showed a sharp increase of 549% growth in rand value year-on-year, which he attributes to the seamless and secure user experience these digital wallets offer consumers today.

“This Black Friday surpassed expectations in a year that has seen South African merchants face tough conditions,” Jain comments.

Mauritius Black Friday 2025 growth

Peach Payments also shared data on its Mauritius operations for the Black Friday weekend, where total monetary value of sales processed increased 1365% over 2024, partly as a result of significant merchants joining the Peach Payments stable. Individual transactions grew by 377%.

“Black Friday is slowly coming into its own in Mauritius. As more merchants make it easier for their customers to pay online, we’ve seen the rupee value of Black Friday sales and individual transactions increase steadily.

“This is only the second year we’re reporting figures for Mauritius. These numbers confirm the island’s consumers have embraced Black Friday and merchants are benefiting from its effects,” Jain says.

This year, we took a fresh look at who we are today and who we’re becoming as we scale across Africa. Our previous values served us well, but as our business, people, and ambitions evolved, we knew it was time to realign our compass.

And importantly – this wasn’t a top-down exercise.
It wasn’t a CEO, People, or leadership-only initiative.

A Team-Led Values Redesign

We formed a cross-functional working group that led the entire process from start to finish. They facilitated open, fun, and deeply honest sessions across the business, giving every Peachie a voice in shaping the behaviours that define us.

From debating what “great teamwork” really means, to unpacking what “customer obsession” looks like in a remote, multi-country business, to rethinking the kind of culture we want our future hires to walk into.

Every insight came from our people.

With a little creativity and a lot of collaboration, we landed on a new set of values that truly reflect who we are and who we want to be.

Our New Values

Commitment to Customers

We think like our merchants, anticipate their needs, and take ownership until challenges are solved. Their growth fuels ours.

Win as One

We collaborate across teams and functions, share context openly, and celebrate wins together because success at Peach is a team sport.

Continuous Learning

We stay curious, adapt quickly, and view every mistake or challenge as an opportunity to grow. Keeping ahead of the industry helps Peach Payments, and our merchants, thrive.

Deliver with Impact

We work with urgency, accountability, and craftsmanship. We’re always asking: How can this be better? Outstanding, lasting impact is the goal.

Respect for People

We value every voice, listen with empathy, and communicate with professionalism. We challenge ideas, not people.

Making Values Real, Not Just Relatable

Having values is one thing. Living them is the real work. So we set out to bring these values into our day-to-day culture in meaningful, energising ways:

Kudos That Count (with Zuzo!)

We’ve integrated our values directly into our kudos platform, encouraging the team to recognise each other in real time. Value-living moments happen daily and now they’re celebrated daily too.

Custom Slack Emojis

In a remote-first world, digital culture matters. Our custom value emojis instantly bring personality and recognition into every conversation.

Monthly Value Champion Awards

Every month, we celebrate Peachies who went the extra mile and embodied a value in an exceptional way.

Posters and Art Across All 4 Offices

Our new visuals, featuring our Peachie mascots, are proudly up across Cape Town, Johannesburg, Nairobi, and Mauritius. They’re fun, they’re vibrant, and they’re a constant reminder of what we stand for.

Friendly Competitions & Team Activities

Because culture is built through connection, we’re weaving our values into games, challenges, and team rituals throughout the year.

Why This Matters

As we expand across Africa, work with more enterprise merchants, and continue to innovate in payments, our values keep us aligned culturally, operationally, and strategically.

They define how we show up for each other, how we show up for our merchants and how we push the industry forward.

This relaunch of our values is only the beginning and we couldn’t be prouder of the people who shaped it.

Here’s to the next chapter, powered by Peachies living our values every day.

Payflex

RCS

Mobicred

Through their set-up in the Mauritius IFC, global and regional companies can accept online payments from customers worldwide, designating Mauritius as their global or regional billing centre. Funds collected in multiple currencies can be consolidated within the Mauritian entity, enabling efficient and centralised management of both regional and global treasury operations.

A fertile Fintech ecosystem in Mauritius

The Global Treasury Survey 2025 by PwC shows that treasurers are adapting to an increasingly complex environment shaped by economic volatility, uncertainty in interest rates and inflation, regulatory shifts and a resurgence in global trade tensions. Hence, such companies need access to a jurisdiction that promises them political and economic stability, ease of capital controls, multi-currency conversions, tax treaties with multiple jurisdictions, robust governance frameworks, as well as a fertile FinTech ecosystem to receive funds and make payments.

Companies benefit from Mauritius’ ease of exchange controls, allowing seamless movement of capital and liquidity management to fund subsidiaries and operations across different countries. This flexibility streamlines cross-border transactions and treasury functions for international businesses.

Why multinational firms are selecting Mauritius for global treasury activities

Political and economic stability: As an enduring democracy, Mauritius continues to be a regional  leader when it comes to political stability, ranked first in education and second in overall governance in the 2024 Ibrahim Index of African Governance. Further, the OECD Review of December 2024 notes that Mauritius’ economy continues to grow strongly, with
real GDP projected to rise by 6.1% in 2024, 5% in 2025 and 4% in 2026.

Multi-currency facilities: Mauritius allows businesses and funds to operate multi-currency bank accounts and businesses can collect online payments in multiple currencies, including MUR, USD, EUR, GBP, ZAR, JPY, AED, CAD, CHF, AUD, HKD and SGD.

Conclusion on the benefits of making Mauritius you financial hub

Free capital conversion: Mauritius imposes no foreign exchange controls. Capital, profits and dividends can be freely repatriated in and out of the country. Wide DTAA and IPPA network: Mauritius has Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs) in place with 45 countries and offers Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (IPPAs) with 25 countries.

Read the full article on page 50 here

Expert Stores

Subwear

iStore

Decofurn

Superbalist

OneDayOnly

Geewiz

Carrol Boyes

Mae Artisan Rugs

Hurley

Superdry

What is a Dispute?

A dispute occurs when a cardholder contacts their card-issuing bank to request a return of their funds. This mechanism is designed by card networks like Visa, Mastercard, and American Express to protect cardholders from fraudulent activities.

What is a Chargeback?

A chargeback is a subsequent action initiated by the issuing bank following a dispute. Once a customer contacts their bank to question a card payment, the bank investigates and, if the rules allow, takes the money back from your payment provider. This amount is then deducted from your merchant account, and a dispute case is opened.

You can either accept the chargeback or fight it by sending proof that the transaction was valid. For example, order details, delivery confirmation, refund policy, messages with the customer, or evidence that the payment was properly verified.

It’s worth noting what a chargeback isn’t. Not every payment type qualifies: scheme chargebacks apply to card transactions. EFTs and other rails follow different processes, even if customers sometimes use the same language to describe them.

Why disputes happen (and how patterns emerge)

Most disputes boil down to a handful of themes. Fraud or unauthorised use sits at one end; “goods not received”, “service not provided”, and “not as described” cluster in the middle; and processing errors (duplicates, wrong amounts, late presentments) round out the rest.

Card networks publish reason codes that map cleanly to these buckets. If you tag your cases internally by reason and by product or offer, patterns show up quickly. That’s where prevention becomes targeted rather than generic.

Most disputes happen because of fraud, when someone uses a card without permission. To help prevent this, Peach Payments uses 3D Secure. It’s a security step that asks the cardholder to confirm their identity (for example, by entering a code or approving a message on their phone) before the payment goes through.

The moving parts of chargebacks

Several parties touch a dispute: the cardholder, the issuer, the network, your acquirer, and you. Timeframes are strict and scheme-specific. The cardholder has up to 120 calendar days from the transaction date (or from the date goods/services were expected to be received) to raise a dispute with their issuing bank. Merchants have 7 days to respond once they are notified of a dispute.

Prevention beats cure

Most chargeback reduction has nothing to do with legalese and everything to do with clarity. Make sure your billing descriptor on statements is recognisable and matches what customers see at checkout and in emails. Set expectations sensibly: delivery timeframes, return terms, and any material product caveats should be easy to find and written in plain English. Confirm orders clearly and give customers a straightforward path to support. Many disputes begin as service issues that could have been solved in your help desk long before a bank got involved. Also make sure there is a way for customers to contact you and provide regular updates once a dispute is raised.

Authentication and processing hygiene matter just as much. Use 3D Secure for card-not-present transactions to strengthen authorisation.  Keep a close eye on your own processing: duplicate captures, amount mismatches and late presentments are fully preventable, yet they generate a surprising share of disputes. Finally, if you store card credentials for returning customers, do it the right way—via tokenisation in a PCI DSS-compliant vault—not on your own servers. That reduces your PCI scope and removes a major source of risk.

Building an evidence pack that actually wins

Think of your dispute documentation as a template library rather than a scramble. For orders delivered physically, courier tracking, delivery confirmation and any signed/OTP proofs are essential. For digital products and services, usage logs, IP and device data, and clear time stamps do the heavy lifting. Always include the order and invoice trail, the version of your refund and returns policy in force at the time, and where the buyer agreed to it. Add your customer service correspondence to demonstrate your effort to resolve matters directly. The key is relevance: respond to the reason code, not to everything you wish were in scope.

Metrics that matter

Three numbers tell you whether you’re improving. The number of chargeback disputes shows whether chargebacks are trending up or down relative to transaction volume. Your win rate (successful resolution of chargebacks) shows whether evidence quality is moving in the right direction. And your internal time-to-respond (and within a deadline) shows whether you’re giving your acquirer the best chance to hit scheme deadlines. Layer on a simple view of the top reasons and the SKUs or offers most commonly involved, and you’ll know exactly where to focus next.

How Peach Payments helps

Peach Payments is designed to reduce both the likelihood and the impact of chargebacks. Sensitive card data never lives on your web servers; when shoppers choose to save a card, credentials are stored using tokenisation in our PCI DSS 4.x vault. 3D Secure is supported out of the box to strengthen authentication for card-not-present transactions. On the operational side, we’ll help you map each reason code to the evidence that matters and set up straightforward reporting so you can spot trends rather than firefight tickets. The goal is simple: fewer disputes, faster resolutions, and more time spent serving customers instead of compiling PDFs.

The takeaway

Chargebacks won’t disappear, but they can be managed. Set clear expectations with customers, authenticate well, keep your processing tight, store credentials safely, and respond quickly with relevant evidence when disputes arise. Do those consistently and chargebacks become a measurable cost of doing business – not a risk to your revenues or your reputation.

For more information on chargebacks, read more here

Black Friday 2024 growth rate

With a growth rate of over 35% in 2024, online retail is far outpacing the sluggish growth of physical retail. For Black Friday 2025, this means retailers have to claim their piece of a market that is expanding ten times faster than physical retail. To handle this surge, there are some basics retailers need to know.

1. Your payment partners must have a proven track record.  Ask about realworld stats, like historical uptimes around 99% and historical processing of more than ten million monthly transactions. Also check if your payment gateway has built-in banking redundancy to keep processing transactions if a bank’s card payment system fails, which is more likely to occur on Black Friday.
2. A fast, clean, and frictionless checkout is no longer a luxury – it’s a necessity. The biggest barrier to capturing the Black Friday opportunity is no longer credit card failure, but cart abandonment. The main drivers of cart abandonment have shifted from payment security to user experience.

   The top reasons for cart abandonment are a long or complicated checkout process (37.3%) and shipping fees (31.3%). The checkout experience is the main battleground. Make sure your payment partner has extensive plugins and integrations built in to provide a seamless, one-page checkout that keeps customers moving from cart to conversion.

3. Global giants compete on price and scale, but local businesses can win on reliability, security, and a local experience. The rise of international platforms has been a hot topic, but local retailers are profitable and confident. A combined 92.0% of retailers expressed satisfaction or strong satisfaction with their current payment gateways. This trust is South African businesses’s superpower.

   Make sure your ecommerce site has industry-leading risk management, fraud detection, and tokenisation that builds consumer confidence. Also offer a wide array of local payment options like Payflex, Capitec Pay, and Scan to Pay, to give your customers the security and familiarity they trust.

4. Don’t underestimate WhatsApp commerce – WhatsApp is a primary engagement channel for South African businesses, but payments lag. While 69.2% of retailers use WhatsApp for support, payments for sales are overwhelmingly completed through EFT invoices (90.3%). This is a classic last-mile problem.

   The technology is here, but the trust signals are not. Instead, consider payment links from secure payment gateways to improve trust in WhatsApp ecommerce. Also consider conversational commerce solutions like FlowCart that work in WhatsApp and already connect to ecommerce platforms like Shopify and Woocommerce.

What to expect from Black Friday 2025

South Africa’s online retail sector is growing significantly faster than physical stores. To succeed, especially for Black Friday, retailers must provide a fast and frictionless checkout experience, and partner with proven, secure payment providers that offer trusted local options.