Payments are the lifeblood of any business, whether it’s making or accepting them. Technology has come a long way in the past two decades, particularly in the mobile space, and today, businesses have quite a few payment options to go with.
To help anyone thinking about changing payment providers or looking for a payment solution for a not-quite-launched-yet business, here are some of the most popular payment gateways/systems in use in South African businesses today.
Yoco
Established in 2015, Yoco is the simplest and most portable credit card processing system in use across the country. Yoco Go terminals have empowered countless small businesses – even tiny spaza shops and streetside vendors – to accept debit and credit card payments, making it easier than ever to sell goods to customers.
Yoco is no fly-by-night, either: transactions are encrypted, and the system is Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) certified, ensuring secure and reliable payment processing. They also have a score of 7.2 on the Hello Peter Trust Index, and a rating of 4 stars on the Google Play Store.
It’s only a matter of time before the beggars at robots cotton on to Yoco Go, which will render motorists’ argument of “Sorry I don’t have cash on me” entirely moot.
Get it from: http://www.yoco.com
Yoco offers:
- Portable payment terminals
- 7.2 on the Hellopeter Trust Index
- PCI DSS compliance
iKhokha
People that sell things online will find a lot to like in iKhokha, an online payment gateway with what it claims is “one of the lowest transaction rates in Africa”, of 2% (excl. VAT) for Instant EFTs and 2.85% (excl. VAT) for credit and debit card transactions.
iKhoka is a payments gateway plugin for popular ecommerce platforms like Wix, WordPress, and Woocommerce, and installation is quick and simple. If you have a website that uses any of those, iKhoka integrates seamlessly with them and lets you transact securely.
As they say on their website, “You only pay when you make money”.
They also offer portable payment terminals for debit and credit card payments, as well as access to an analytics platform that gives you insight into what your business is doing.
Get it from: http://www.ikhoka.com
Ikhoka offers:
- An online payments gateway
- Integration with popular ecommerce platforms
- Portable payment terminals
- Transaction Analytics
- 10/10 on the Hellopeter Trust Index
- PCI DSS compliance
Payfast
For online businesses looking to make it as easy as possible for their customers to pay them, Payfast is one of the best options out there.
That’s because Payfast supports a good number of payment methods, including credit card, Instant EFT, Masterpass, Mobicred, SCode, RCS store cards, MoreTyme, and debit cards.
By implementing Payfast as your website’s payment gateway, not only are all of your transactions secured but there’s a layer of fraud detection in there too, ensuring that the chances of getting scammed by dodgy customers are kept to a minimum.
At a charge of 3.2% per transaction, you’ll pay more in fees, and apparently, they charge you a fee to transfer the money you’ve made into your bank account, but Payfast’s variety of supported payment methods and their security and support goes some way to justifying it.
The only negatives we could find about Payfast were a low Trust Index rating of just 3.9, and a Hellopeter average rating of 2.67 out of 5. Perhaps ask around before adopting them.
Get it from: http://www.payfast.co.za
Payfast offers:
- Many ways to accept payments
- Integration with most popular ecommerce platforms
- Fraud-detection technology
- Easy and quick setup
- 3.9 Trust Index score
- PCI DSS compliance
Zapper
Zapper’s approach to payments is pretty damn cool: it’s a payment system that can be used anywhere payments are made, whether that’s in-store or online, by generating QR codes for customers to scan using the Zapper app.
When scanned, the QR codes present the bill and allow the customer to make the payment right from inside the app, which has been linked to their credit card. It’s particularly good for restaurants, as it calculates tips to make it easy for the customer to add one.
More than a mere payment gateway, Zapper offers businesses ways to engage with their customers by sending targeted custom messages and promos to their devices and offering them incentives with in-app promotions and campaigns.
What makes Zapper cooler than the other payment gateways on this list is that it provides what feels like a futuristic payment experience for the customer, and we love that.
Gauging Zapper’s trustworthiness is not so clear, however, as Hellopeter is full of complaints about the service, particularly of its use with the “Disky” license renewal service. But complaints are all over the place, there aren’t enough of them to give Zapper a Trust Index score, and the dates go back as far as 2020 – and that’s only on the first page. So take these with a pinch of salt.
Zapper is still pretty cool to use, though, when it works.
Get it from: http://www.zapper.com
Zapper offers:
- Invoices presented to customers with QR codes that link to the app
- Popular eCommerce platform integration
- Payment right from inside the credit-card-linked app
- Customer engagement options
- Unclear trustworthiness based on Hellopeter complaints
- PCI DSS compliance
SnapScan
SnapScan also lets people scan QR codes (which it calls “SnapCodes”) to make payments, but it has a bunch of other features that offer merchants more options to facilitate transactions, making it a bit more versatile than Zapper.
For starters, it can send customers links (called SnapLinks) over email, sms, or social media that let them pay remotely. Then there’s ecommerce integrations for online stores, and billing solutions that let businesses send their customers statements and invoices. SnapScan uses encryption, 2FA, tokenisation and is PCI DSS compliant, so transactions are safe.
It’s not as common as Zapper, going on personal experience, and unfortunately, Hellopeter is also full of people moaning about SnapScan for various reasons, so its Trust Index score is also quite low (3.3). The most vocal complaints are about the FICA verification requirement that’s needed to get money out of SnapScan.
If you’re considering SnapScan as your payments provider, maybe dig a little deeper before taking the plunge.
Get SnapScan at: http://www.snapscan.co.za
SnapScan offers:
- Payment processing for in-person and online stores
- SnapCodes, SnapLinks, the SnapStore app
- Mobile card machines for CC/DC payments
- PCI DSS compliance
Conclusion
In fact, due diligence applies to all of these payment solutions. We’ve listed them here as they come up in lists of the most popular options, but as always, doing your own homework is best before actually adopting any of them.
We also found that Hellopeter seems to be where South Africans enjoy venting their spleens, and where they like to throw 1-star “reviews” (which are really just complaints) at any service that displeases them, even if the issue at hand is caused by their own lack of understanding of the processes required. Hooray for the education system.
Anyway, we believe these payment gateways each have something good to offer and are thus all worth a closer look.
And now you know about them, so over to you.