On fees alone, instant EFT wins, and not narrowly. Every provider that publishes both rails prices its pay-by-bank rail below its card rail, and because the money moves bank to bank there are no card chargebacks on it. At our standard scenario (a R650 basket, R150,000 a month, incl VAT), every modelled bank rail lands between 1.80% and 2.41% effective, while every card rail lands between 3.04% and 4.21%. The cheapest card option is more expensive than the most expensive bank option.
So why does any store still take cards? Because fees are not the whole argument, and the rest of it favours cards. Here is both sides, with numbers.
How much cheaper is instant EFT?
The published rates, side by side. Card rails carry a fixed fee at some providers; bank rails tend to carry a minimum instead:
| Provider | Local cards | Instant EFT / pay-by-bank | Verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ozow | 2.85% (min R1.00) | 1.5% (min R1.00) | Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. ozow.com/pricing |
| Peach Payments | 2.95% + R1.50 | 1.5% + R1.50 | Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. www.peachpayments.com/fees |
| PayFast | 3.2% + R2.00 | 2% (min R2.00) | Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. payfast.io/fees |
| iKhokha | 2.85% | 2% | Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. www.ikhokha.com/pricing |
| Stitch Express | 2.95% | 2% | Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. stitch.money/express |
| Paystack | 2.9% + R1.00 | 2% | Read off the provider's own published pricing page. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. paystack.com/za/pricing |
| Yoco | 2.95% (2.55% above R50k/month, Core plan) | Not offered | From the provider's own domain, but a support article rather than its rate card. Checked this month, on 23 Jul 2026. support.yoco.help/articles/270145 |
Rates ex VAT, for local transactions. Ozow’s card rate is banded by transaction value and shown here for a typical basket. Yoco’s online rates come from its help centre, not its rate card, and wear the weaker stamp.
The pattern is consistent: bank rails run 1.5% to 2%, card rails run 2.85% to 3.2% plus fixed fees. On a R1,000 order, that is roughly R15 to R20 out on EFT versus R29 to R34 out on cards. Margins in retail are thin enough that a percentage point on every sale is a real number at year end.
Then there is the risk column. A card payment can be disputed months after the goods shipped; a bank payment cannot be charged back at all. No provider publishes its chargeback penalty, so our calculator carries an editorial provision of R120 per chargeback and says so. Whatever the true figure, on high-ticket orders the exposure is the point: an EFT payment that cleared is final in a way a card authorisation never quite is.
When do cards beat instant EFT?
Cards win on the things a rate card does not capture:
- Conversion. Paying by EFT means logging into your bank inside a checkout. Plenty of shoppers do it happily, and Capitec Pay and PayShap have made it smoother, but some fraction of any audience abandons at that step. A card saved in a browser autofills.
- Recurring billing. Subscriptions run on card tokenisation: vault the card once, charge it monthly. EFT is customer-initiated by design, so it cannot quietly bill someone each month. Bank-side alternatives exist, DebiCheck debit orders and Capitec Pay’s variable recurring payments through providers like Stitch, but they are the exception, not the default. Yoco, for the record, offers no recurring billing on either rail.
- Reach. Cards work for every customer with a bank account and for international shoppers. Instant EFT coverage depends on the customer’s bank and does not extend abroad.
None of these show up in an effective rate, and all of them show up in revenue. A cheaper rail that loses the sale is the most expensive rail there is.
What does the gap look like on your numbers?
The spread between rails depends on your basket size, volume, refund rate and how often you withdraw. Set your own numbers and watch the ranking reorder:
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 →
The full calculator breaks each total into processing, refund loss, payout fees and the chargeback provision.
Should you offer both?
Yes, and nearly every established SA store does. The standard setup:
- Instant EFT as the cheap default, listed first in the checkout, because every customer who chooses it saves you a percentage point or more.
- Cards alongside it, for the shoppers who will not bank-login, for everyone abroad, and for anything recurring.
Most providers in the table above give you both rails behind one integration, so this is not two contracts, it is one checkbox. The compare table shows both columns for every provider, each figure with the date we verified it, and the effective-rate maths lives in the calculator whenever your basket or volume changes.
