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On June 23, 2026, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB)  published a joint industry communication setting out its coordinated regulatory approach to cross-border payment facilitators, accompanied by two documents open for public consultation: a draft directive issued by the National Payment System Department and a draft exchange control circular issued by the Financial Surveillance Department. The South African Reserve Bank attributes the regulatory action to two structural concerns: the misclassification of domestically delivered payments as cross-border transactions where issuers and acquirers are not registered in South Africa; and the emergence of unregulated cross-border payment facilitator models in which payment instructions for offshore merchants are aggregated and acquired domestically under sponsorship arrangements with authorised domestic acquirers. The South African Reserve Bank identifies associated risks including merchant identity opacity and the potential circumvention of customer due diligence, anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, and balance of payments reporting obligations. The draft directive and draft circular establish the following: The National Payment System Department requires domestic payment instruments to be issued exclusively by domestic issuers and prohibits any person from acquiring domestic transactions unless that person is a domestic acquirer, with foreign issuers and acquirers prohibited from operating domestically unless they are also registered as domestic entities. The National Payment System Department permits cross-border payment facilitators, defined as South African-registered limited liability companies, to operate in the national payment system under acquiring sponsorship arrangements, subject to compliance with the directive and the Financial Surveillance Department circular, and reserves the right to require such facilitators to obtain domestic acquirer authorisation if their scale, volumes, or market concentration pose systemic risk. The National Payment System Department requires domestic acquirers to obtain prior written approval before sponsoring a cross-border payment facilitator, and makes domestic acquirers fully accountable for acquiring, settlement, scheme compliance, and all applicable regulatory obligations in respect of transactions processed through the facilitator. The National Payment System Department requires acquiring sponsorship arrangements to provide for: written agreements without exclusivity clauses; transaction flow compliance with anti-money laundering, counter-terrorist financing, proliferation financing, and sanctions obligations; consumer protection measures covering fee transparency, exchange rate disclosure, dispute resolution, and chargeback mechanisms; offshore merchant fund segregation in a separate South African bank account; and the ability to produce any information relating to the sponsorship arrangement within 24 hours upon request. The National Payment System Department requires sponsoring acquirers to submit biannual reports at the end of January and July each year, covering the number of onboarded facilitators and offshore merchants, merchant names and business descriptions, and aggregated transaction volumes and values per merchant. The directive repeals and replaces Directive No. 1 of 2020 and enters into effect within six months of publication. The Financial Surveillance Department permits payment aggregators to partner with an Authorised Dealer to process low-value, high-volume payments for cross-border retail e-commerce transactions by resident individuals, with consolidated funds transferred through an Authorised Dealer to the designated foreign bank account of the international merchant in compliance with exchange control policy. Individual transactions are capped at R50,000, and splitting transactions to circumvent that limit is prohibited. The Financial Surveillance Department requires Authorised Dealers to obtain written approval for each aggregator partnership and amends the Currency and Exchanges Manual for Authorised Dealers to introduce definitions of "Aggregator" and "e-commerce transactions" and a new section A.5 setting out guidelines and procedures for aggregator-facilitated cross-border retail e-commerce transactions. The NPSD has published a draft directive on issuing and acquiring payments for goods and services provided by offshore merchants. Stakeholders must submit comments on the NPSD draft directive by July 17, 2026, with responses to be submitted via the SARB's official channels. Further clarifications can be requested from media@resbank.co.za.