SARB gets green light to acquire shareholding in Bankserv

The Competition Tribunal said on Thursday that it has unconditionally approved the merger in which the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) will acquire shareholding in the South African Bankers Services Company (Bankserv).

Following the merger, the SARB will control Bankserv. The SARB, an organ of the state, is South Africa’s central bank. Its primary mandate is to protect the value of the South African Rand in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth.

Relevant to this transaction is that the SARB is responsible for managing the National Payment System (NPS). The NPS includes all the systems, mechanisms, institutions, agreements, procedures, rules and laws that come into play from the moment an end-user, using a payment instrument, issues an instruction to pay another person or business, to the final interbank settlement of the transaction in the books of the central bank (in this case, the SARB). 

The target firm, BankservAfrica, is the primary payment clearing house system operator, authorised by the Payment Association of South Africa, for domestic payments in South Africa. Its main activity is delivering payment clearing and settlement services for South African financial institutions such as banks. It facilitates payment transactions between payment institutions and enables domestic payment transactions involving different bank clients to occur between different banks, and for those payment transactions to be settled and cleared seamlessly.

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