South Africa’s ATM network faces its biggest overhaul in decades

The Reserve Bank will start piloting white-labelled ATMs in January, the first step in a plan to turn all of South Africa’s more than 30 000 machines into a shared, unbranded network where transactions below a set threshold are free.

To get there, the central bank intends to establish a national cash utility by March 2027 and to start bringing cash centres run by the likes of SBV and Fidelity into the Reserve Bank by the middle of that year, senior officials said at a media briefing on Friday.

“We are asking banks to white-label all ATMs,” said Pradeep Maharaj, executive director of the Reserve Bank’s Payments Ecosystem Modernisation (PEM) programme. “It will be a robust conversation, in continued collaboration with the banks, but that is our thinking.”

The central bank set out its plans earlier this year in a position paper, Towards a Cash Smart Society . The banks have since come back with alternative models, Maharaj said, and the Reserve Bank has undertaken to return to them in November, with a view to rolling out next year. “We will arrive at a final solution that works for the country.

“Our requirement is that all ATMs should allow deposits, withdrawals and balance enquiries and, below a certain amount, transactions must be free,” he said.

That would be a big change. About 9 200 of the country’s roughly 30 600 ATMs are run by independent deployers that do not accept cash deposits, according to the Reserve Bank’s cost of cash study , which used 2024 data. Maharaj also took aim at what he called the “disloyalty fee”, charged when a customer’s own bank’s ATM is out of order.

Maharaj presented the overhaul as a fix for unequal access rather than a war on cash. There are more ATMs in Sandton City than in neighbouring Alexandra township.

“Cash is a public good and core to inclusivity,” he said. The Reserve Bank is not trying to build a cashless society, he added: “That does not exist and will not exist.” Countries that had tried had failed. Cash still accounts for 56% of consumer transactions by volume, according to the cost of cash study.

Arif Ismail, head of the central bank’s national payment system department, said there is about R180-billion in cash in the system, and that it costs about R90-billion/year to manage. The cost of cash study puts the annual economic cost at R88.5-billion, or about 1.2% of GDP, and finds that the poorest pay the most: consumers earning up to R1 250/month spend about 5% of their income on cash-related costs, against 1% for those earning R20 000 or more.

The economics are turning against the current model. As digital payments grow, the vaults, vehicles and ATMs that move cash cost the same to run but are spread over fewer transactions, the Reserve Bank argues. Branches and ATMs in less profitable rural and low-income areas close first, leaving “cash deserts” where the people most reliant on cash travel further and pay more for it.

Maharaj said the cost of cash would have to fall by at least 30% just for the system to stand still.