Buy-now-pay-later has become a standard checkout option in South Africa, especially on baskets over about R500, where splitting the payment measurably lifts conversion. The deal for you as the merchant is simple: you are paid up front and in full, minus a fee higher than a card rate, and the BNPL provider carries the consumer credit risk. Whether that trade pays depends on your basket size and margin, and this guide puts the available numbers on it, including the ones the providers do not publish.
Which BNPL providers operate in South Africa?
Six names matter, and they structure the customer’s side differently:
| Provider | The customer pays | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Payflex | 4 interest-free instalments over 6 weeks, 25% upfront | The first and most widely accepted SA BNPL |
| PayJustNow | 3 interest-free instalments over 3 months | Strong retail footprint; the longer window suits bigger baskets |
| Happy Pay | 2–3 instalments, no-deposit options | Newer Cape Town fintech, available through Stitch Express |
| Float | Up to 24 instalments against their existing credit-card limit | Issues no new credit, so approval is instant for card holders |
| Mobicred | A revolving credit account, interest-bearing | The long-standing incumbent, available through several gateways |
| MoreTyme | TymeBank’s pay-in-3 | Available through PayFast |
Two of these are not classic pay-in-N products: Mobicred is revolving credit and Float rides the customer’s existing card limit. They matter anyway, because they answer the same customer question, “can I spread this?”, and because they are the routes with the most transparent merchant pricing.
What does BNPL cost a merchant?
Here is the honest part. The pure BNPL providers do not publish standalone merchant fees. Payflex, PayJustNow, Happy Pay and Float all price by negotiated quote, so any specific rate you read for them is either a quote someone received or a guess. We do not publish figures we cannot source.
What is published, and verified, is what BNPL costs when routed through a gateway, and it draws a clear band:
| Route | Merchant fee | Verified |
|---|---|---|
| PayJustNow via Peach Payments | 5.35% + R4.80, plus R1.50/txn and R199/month | PayJustNow BNPL via Peach Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 20 Jul 2026. www.peachpayments.com/fees |
| Pay Later (Split) via Stitch Express | 5.7% | Stitch native BNPL rate Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 20 Jul 2026. stitch.money/express |
| MoreTyme via PayFast | 5.5% + R2.00 | MoreTyme via PayFast Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 20 Jul 2026. payfast.io/fees |
| Buy now, pay later via Ozow | 4.99% + R4.00 | Ozow BNPL rail Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 20 Jul 2026. ozow.com/pricing |
| Mobicred via PayFast | 3.2%, no fixed fee | Mobicred via PayFast Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 20 Jul 2026. payfast.io/fees |
Rates ex VAT, read off each gateway’s own pricing page. A direct contract with a BNPL provider is quoted case by case and can land below these; use the band as your negotiating reference, not a ceiling.
The pattern: pay-in-N products cluster around 5% to 5.7% plus fixed fees, roughly double a card rate, while Mobicred prices like a card because the customer, not you, pays the credit cost through interest. That gap is not a gateway markup conspiracy; it is what instalment credit costs when someone else carries it.
Is the fee worth it?
Put rand on the trade. On a R1,000 basket through Peach, PayJustNow costs about R60 against R31 for a card: call it 2.9 percentage points of margin. That is pure loss on a sale that would have happened anyway, which is why BNPL earns its keep only on the sales that would not have happened, the abandoned cart, or the R700 basket that becomes R1,100 because the customer is paying in thirds.
So the arithmetic collapses to one question: does the uplift clear the fee gap? If BNPL brings in even one extra R1,000 sale for every ten that merely switch from card to BNPL, the extra sale’s margin usually covers the ten fee gaps, on healthy retail margins. On thin margins, 3% of every switched sale is real money and the same uplift may not save it. Track where BNPL orders actually come from in your analytics before you judge it, and remember two structural comforts: you are paid in full up front, and non-payment is the provider’s problem, not yours.
Category matters as much as margin. Fashion, homeware, electronics and anything discretionary over R500 is where SA’s BNPL adoption concentrates; groceries and low-ticket items are not worth the integration.
How do you add BNPL without a new contract?
The quickest route is the one your gateway already carries:
- PayFast ships Mobicred and MoreTyme as checkout methods you switch on.
- Peach Payments carries PayJustNow, priced on its published fee page.
- Ozow and Stitch each run their own BNPL rail alongside cards and pay-by-bank.
Going direct to Payflex or another provider gets you their brand at your checkout and a negotiated rate, at the cost of another integration and another reconciliation stream. Either way, get the quote in writing with the full fee schedule, the same discipline as verifying any gateway’s fees.
The balanced setup for a store testing BNPL: one BNPL option for the customers who need to spread payments, next to instant EFT as the cheap default for everyone else. The expensive rail wins sales, the cheap rail keeps margin, and the mix is yours to tune.
