If it quacks like a duck: Kganyago on regulating fintechs

Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago speaking at the MTN Group Fintech Summit on Tuesday. Fanie van Rooyen/TechCentral

The South African Reserve Bank is preparing to put the country’s fast-growing fintech sector on the same regulatory footing as banks, with governor Lesetja Kganyago using the opening of MTN Group Fintech’s 2026 summit in Johannesburg on Tuesday to signal that the long-awaited National Payment System Bill will soon go out for public comment.

Delivering the keynote at the second MTN Group Fintech Summit, Kganyago said the central bank’s reform of the payment system would move South Africa away from an entity-based model, in which regulation follows the type of institution, towards an activity-based one, in which it follows what is actually being done.

“The principle is straightforward: similar payment activities should be subject to similar regulatory expectations, whether they are performed by a bank or a fintech,” he said. “If it walks and quacks like a duck, it is a duck, and it should be treated as one.”

What that means in practice was spelled out from the industry side at the same event. At a media roundtable, MTN Group Fintech executive Cedric N’guessan said a number of other African markets allow non-banks to hold a dedicated mobile money licence rather than a full banking licence.

South Africa has no such licence, which is why fintechs here have had to partner with a licensed bank to move money. The Reserve Bank, N’guessan said, is working on a local equivalent – the gap the authorisation framework and the National Payment System Bill are meant to close.

That principle, Kganyago argued, is what allows the system to open up to new players. New participants would have to take on “the core obligations that are the price of admission to the payment system”, including governance, the safety of customer funds, anti-money laundering controls and ongoing supervisory oversight.

Clearer regulatory pathways

The Reserve Bank is starting with an authorisation framework to give clearer regulatory pathways for payment activities and participants, with the National Payment System Bill to follow and provide what Kganyago called “a more durable legislative foundation for the ecosystem”.

“As the bill goes out for public comments, I would urge you to engage with it because it is going to change the ecosystem within which you are going to operate,” he told his audience. “I am a regulator and not an innovator. I know how to set the rules for the game, and I expect you to adhere to the rules we set.”

Central to the new architecture is PayInc, the body formerly known as BankservAfrica, in which the Reserve Bank has taken a shareholding and which is being built into a national payment utility open to all participants that meet the rules. Kganyago described it as “a national payment utility that is accessible to all players who meet the rules of participation in the South African payment ecosystem”.

He said modernising payments is now one of the Reserve Bank’s top three strategic objectives, alongside price and financial stability, and that fintechs are already reshaping the market. A second Reserve Bank fintech scoping study had counted about 400 fintechs operating in South Africa, he said, helping to expand access, improve customer experience and push established institutions to raise standards of governance and resilience.

Kganyago put the whole exercise through what he called the “no questions asked” test for money, borrowing from the Bank for International Settlements: money is what a counterparty will accept “without complaint or hesitation”. Neither cash nor cards fully passes that test in South Africa today, he argued, with many consumers withdrawing grants in cash over fees and security worries, and merchants baulking at card charges of 2-3%.

“What I would like to see is South Africa’s money being accepted with confidence, no questions asked, wherever it is tendered,” he said. “Neither cash nor cards can fully pass that test at this stage. Together, we can do better.”

He also warned that modernisation raises the stakes on risk and resilience. Where a payment once passed through a handful of banks, it might now begin on a phone, run on cloud infrastructure and cross several technology providers in seconds. “A disruption at one technology provider can affect several institutions. A cyber incident can undermine confidence far beyond the institution where it begins,” he said.

The venue underlined the scale of what is at stake. MTN Group Fintech’s MoMo platform processed 13 billion transactions worth US$330-billion in the six months to end-June across 14 markets, with active MoMo users rising to 70.8 million. Globally, mobile money crossed the $2-trillion mark in transaction value in 2025, with sub-Saharan Africa the engine of that growth. — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media

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