Card payments company UnionPay International has appointed automated clearing house BankservAfrica as the domestic processor for all of UnionPay's card issuing and acquiring services across its current automated teller machines, points-of-sale and e-commerce payment channels.

This appointment supports the South African Reserve Bank’s directive to ensure sustainable and robust transaction processing on-soil in South Africa to promote and support local payments infrastructure to drive lower cost and innovation to better serve South Africans, said BankservAfrica.

“This development is an alternative in the existing card ecosystem and an additional choice to customer banks,” said BankservAfrica CEO Stephen Linnell.

UnionPay, which is a subsidiary of China-based UnionPay, has decided to partner with local infrastructure to fast-track affordable, accessible and innovative card payments for South Africans and, in so doing, support local on-soil capability, creating additional economies of scale through existing card rails for South African payments participants.

“This partnership with UnionPay International builds synergies to enhance the capabilities and broaden the scale for card payments in emerging and new markets. Inviting innovation that caters for these segments will address the persisting financial inclusion challenge,” Linnell said.

“BankservAfrica has built a solid reputation as Africa’s largest automated clearing house and the banking sector’s trusted clearing partner. By joining forces with an organisation that shares UnionPay International Scheme’s purpose of serving the best interests of communities, our offerings to the market, including our fees, are customised for the local environment,” said UnionPay International Africa branch head Asad Burney.

“By taking our approach of shared growth, we can create an enabling marketplace that benefits all participants within the payments ecosystem including financial institutions, small businesses and retailers for the economy to thrive,” he said.