# Visa Pledges R1 Billion to South African Payments Infrastructure as Digital Use Passes 90%

> The company says it's building a Johannesburg data center and has already helped 1.6 million South African small businesses start accepting digital payments, framing SMEs as the real test of whether the country's digital shift actually works.

- Source: African Economy
- Canonical URL: https://africaneconomy.net/article/visa-south-africa-economic-future-payments-infrastructure
- Author: African Economy Staff
- Section: Tech & Startups
- Published: 2026-10-21T11:46:20.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-21T11:46:20.000Z
- Tags: Visa, South Africa, digital payments, SMEs, fintech

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Visa says it is investing roughly R1 billion, about $60.8 million, over three years into South Africa's digital payments infrastructure, including a new Johannesburg data center, in a piece for Forbes Africa by the company's Regional President for Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Tareq Muhmood. The investment comes as more than 90 percent of South Africans now use digital payment methods beyond cash and cards, according to Stitch's 2025 South Africa Consumer Payments Report, with more than 60 percent of face-to-face transactions now contactless.

The piece frames small and medium enterprises, which contribute roughly a third of South Africa's GDP, as the real test of whether that digital shift is translating into broad economic benefit rather than concentrating around already-large merchants. Visa says it has helped more than 1.6 million South African SMEs begin accepting digital payments over the past five years through tools like mobile point-of-sale systems and tap-to-phone technology, and that more than two million South Africans now receive social disbursements digitally rather than through cash-based channels.

The company also flagged a less celebrated side of the shift: it identified nearly $1 billion in scam-related activity in South Africa between July and December 2025 alone, which it describes as now the single largest category of consumer payment fraud in the country. The piece argues South Africa's task going forward is less about proving digital payments can work and more about building out the infrastructure and fraud protections needed to execute that shift at national scale, for SMEs and underserved households as much as for large retailers.

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Originally published by African Economy. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://africaneconomy.net/article/visa-south-africa-economic-future-payments-infrastructure.