Keep up with the pace of payments

Expanding into new markets presents both challenges and opportunities for global businesses. South Africa, with its dynamic economy and rapidly evolving digital landscape, stands out as a promising destination. 

1. High internet penetration and reliable connectivity

Data Insight: South Africa has one of the highest internet penetration rates in Africa, with approximately 72% of the population online, translating to over 43 million internet users as of 2024 (1). Major urban centres like Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban are at the forefront of digital connectivity, supported by robust broadband infrastructure and expanding fibre optic networks.

Opportunity: This widespread and reliable internet access creates an ideal environment for businesses offering digital goods and services. With mobile internet accounting for over 90% of usage (2), there is a significant opportunity for merchants to cater to a mobile-first audience.

2. A digitally engaged population

Data Insight: South Africa’s youthful demographic is a driving force behind its digital engagement. 44% of the population is under the age of 25 (3), with strong inclinations towards digital platforms, including social media, streaming services, gaming, and online education.

Opportunity: This tech-savvy generation is not only comfortable with digital interactions but actively seeks out new and innovative digital experiences. Businesses can capitalise on this by offering digital products such as e-books, streaming subscriptions, and online courses tailored to young consumers.

3. A mature e-commerce ecosystem

Data Insight: In 2023, Africa added more new e-commerce shoppers to the world than any other region. In South Africa alone, the value of e-commerce transactions is expected to surge to $12 billion in 2025, catalysed by changing consumer behaviour, widespread internet penetration, and market entry of global brands such as Amazon. Digital goods are a significant part of this growth, with online learning, digital gaming, and subscription-based content seeing steady popularity.

Opportunity: This mature ecosystem provides a solid foundation for digital merchants, reducing entry risks and offering a conducive environment for growth. Digital goods, in particular, avoid logistical hurdles like shipping and import costs, making them an attractive category.

4. Advanced digital payments infrastructure

Data Insight: South Africa has a well-established digital payments infrastructure, with a variety of options, including credit and debit cards, mobile wallets, and bank transfers. Account to Account payment methods such as Capitec Pay are driving rapid digital inclusion of card-averse customers, increasing the total addressable market for digital commerce.

Opportunity: This advanced payment landscape lowers barriers for international merchants, enabling seamless transactions in South African Rands while ensuring compliance with local regulations. Payment providers like Precium offer solutions tailored to merchants entering the market.

5. Thriving digital entertainment market

Data Insight: Digital entertainment is a growing sector, with nearly 40% of South Africans engaging in some form of online gaming (4). Streaming services, digital music, and video-on-demand platforms are also experiencing increased adoption.

Opportunity: Businesses in the digital entertainment and gaming space can tap into this well-established audience. Monetisation models such as subscriptions, in-game purchases, and premium content have strong potential in the market.

6. Demand for localised and affordable digital education

Data Insight: The demand for online education is surging, with the e-learning market expected to reach R2 billion ($105 million USD) by 2025 (5). Online tutoring, educational software, and skills-based learning platforms are becoming increasingly popular.

Opportunity: Businesses that localise digital learning content to meet the needs of South African learners will find strong demand. Affordable and skills-focused education tools are particularly well-received, especially those aimed at job readiness and professional development.

7. Tech-savvy middle class with rising disposable income

Data Insight: South Africa’s middle class comprises approximately 18 million people, with increasing spending power on digital goods and services (6).

Opportunity: This segment is actively investing in digital subscriptions, software, and online services. Businesses offering convenience and digital innovation are likely to find a receptive audience.

8. Government support for digital economy growth

Data Insight: The South African government is prioritising digital transformation, e-commerce, and online payment modernisation through regulatory reforms and broadband investments (7).

Opportunity: A more structured regulatory framework creates a secure operating environment for digital merchants. Compliance, data privacy, and consumer protection standards are improving, making it easier for international businesses to establish themselves in South Africa.

9. Opportunities in digital payments and financial services

Data Insight: South Africa has a diverse digital payments ecosystem with over 200 active fintech companies (8). Consumers are increasingly comfortable using various digital payment methods, including DebiCheck and mobile payments.

Opportunity: For online merchants, this familiarity with digital transactions means an easier conversion process for digital goods. Payment providers like Precium help facilitate secure and compliant transactions, improving conversion rates and reducing payment friction.

10. Presence of reliable partners for market entry

Data Insight: South Africa has an established ecosystem of service providers assisting international businesses, including logistics, compliance, and digital payments (9).

Opportunity: Merchants don’t have to enter the market alone. By partnering with experienced providers, they can mitigate risks and navigate the specific needs of South African digital consumers more effectively.

If you're a global merchant or payment platform looking to compliantly expand into and process local payments in South Africa, connect with us to explore how we can support your African expansion ambitions. 

Data Sources

1. Statista, 2024 – Internet penetration in South Africa
2. ICASA, 2024 – Mobile internet usage statistics
3. World Bank, 2023 – Demographics report on South Africa
4. Newzoo, 2024 – Gaming trends in South Africa
5. Research and Markets, 2024 – South African e-learning industry report
6. Business Tech, 2024 – South Africa’s middle-class spending trends
7. South African Government Gazette, 2024 – Digital economy policy updates
8. Fintech Africa, 2024 – South Africa’s fintech ecosystem growth
9. Trade & Investment South Africa, 2024 – Market entry support for businesses

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Most businesses think of payments as a cost centre. The smartest ones see payments as a retention tool. For businesses that rely on regular, consistent payments from customers, this reframing is a necessity in order to grow. 

In this article, we discuss how embedded payment experiences can keep subscribers engaged and paying for longer. 

Why payment experience matters for retention

Subscribers are hard to win, but easy to lose. And they increasingly expect more than just a great product or service — they want a seamless experience across every touchpoint. Churn, whether it is voluntary or involuntary, is an ever present risk. But how can businesses get ahead of the problem? 

By weaving smart payment options into creative retention strategies, merchants can turn routine transactions into loyalty drivers and opportunities for deeper customer engagement. 

Three ways to retain and delight customers with embedded payments 

1. Supercharge smart payment plans with rewards 

A primary risk to recurring payments businesses is voluntary churn. 

Voluntary churn is when a customer chooses to cancel their subscription because they no longer want to continue their relationship with your business. The reasons for voluntary churn range from a customer having a disappointing experience to not seeing the value of the product or service they’re paying for. 

Recurring payment businesses can capitalise on the growing popularity of reward programs to get ahead of voluntary churn. 

By connecting benefits and savings to uninterrupted or long-term payments, merchants can demonstrate real value that will make customers feel not only more comfortable maintaining their payment, but also happy to. 

Idea starters: 

• Annual payment discounts that genuinely excite customers (10-20% savings)
• Premium features bundled with longer payment commitments
• Exclusive perks for customers who choose specific payment methods
• Rewards for uninterrupted payment “streaks” or on sign-up anniversaries 

Real impact: In a 2023 study of 6000 consumers, it was found that 48% of subscribers feel more valued when rewarded for loyalty and 82% would stay subscribed if they were given loyalty incentives. 

Some recurring payments businesses can benefit from running dual loyalty programs: a free program to reward past, consistent payments, and a paid program to encourage future payments. Paid loyalty programs generate value by changing customer behaviour; reports suggest that not only will customers who are a part of a paid loyalty program increase their purchase frequency but they will also spend more per basket. 

For example, Checkers offers customers Xtra Savings as a free loyalty program to reward shoppers. The immediate benefit makes Checkers an obvious choice, whether shopping in-person or online. 

This is combined with Xtra Savings Plus – a paid loyalty program designed to influence future payment behaviour by giving members rewards like unlimited basket sizes on Sixty60 (their on-demand delivery service) for a R99 monthly fee. This program pays off in the future as shoppers are more likely to choose Checkers to make the most of their subscription. 

Caution: Design your loyalty program with care. There’s only one chance to make a good impression and it needs to be valuable for both the brand and the customer. McKinsey's research on paid loyalty programs indicates that consumers expect at least a 150% return on their subscription fee through new offerings. 
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2. Turn cancellations into opportunities with personalised payment options

Sometimes things don’t go to plan so when customers hit the cancel button, smart payment alternatives can save the relationship.

Pro tip: A good business capability to develop is to conduct post-cancellation research. The feedback from your customers can be used to develop insights into where you should focus your efforts. 
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Idea starters: 

• Best for gyms: temporary payment holidays for customers facing short-term challenges such as an account pause 
• Best for internet service providers: flexible payment date adjustments to match customer paydays
• Best for streaming services: one-time discount offers at the critical moment
• Best for car rental or lease: split payment options for customers managing cash flow
• Best for insurance providers: switching to different payment methods that better suit their needs

Real impact: In PYMNTS’ Subscription Readiness Report 2023, some of the top drivers of subscription cancellations were: 

• Subscription was renewed without approval (31%)
• Misinformation about recurring charges (29%) 
• Inability to pause or skip subscription (27%)
• Inability to change subscription frequency (23%)
• Unavailability of digital wallet payments (22%)
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Transparent, flexible payment options are critical to preventing cancellation before it happens. Designing checkout experiences that clearly outline the terms of the recurring charge and offer customers multiple frequencies and payment options proactively address drivers of cancellation, ensuring resources are allocated to the most complex win-back cases. 
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3. Make reactivation as simple as possible 

Customers who experience involuntary churn may want to reactivate their subscription. The key is simplicity, ensuring a seamless pathway to payment.  

Real impact: Involuntary churn is when a customer’s payment fails, leading to the cancellation of their subscription. Unlike voluntary churn, the customer is not explicitly choosing to stop doing business with you. While it sounds like a glitch that seldom happens, involuntary churn makes up 20-40% of typical churn rates – making it a top priority for businesses to solve. 
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Idea starters: 

As with cancellation, it’s better to prevent failed payments than to recover them.

• Minimise involuntary churn with automatic updating of card-on-file information when a customer’s card is replaced or expires. 
• Partner with a payment processor that offers end-to-end redundancy and offers features like cascading and multi-acquiring to mitigate failures. 
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If reactivation is required: 

• Embed secure payment links directly in live chats or email threads so customers can reactivate without leaving the conversation. 
• Enable one-click reactivation with stored payment details. 
• Offer multiple recurring payment methods like card, EFT debit order, or Capitec Pay.
• Make switching payment methods seamless. A failed payment at this crucial moment might result in a customer lost permanently. Make it easy to update details or switch methods.

Real impact: Businesses using chat-integrated payment flows see significantly higher conversion rates. According to a Campaign Monitor report, if a visitor engages with a live chat agent, they’re 2.8 times more likely to end up purchasing a product. In fact, 38% of customers reported making a purchase after having a good session with a live chat agent.
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Tips for activating customer retention strategies 

1. Experimental mindset 
   
   • Pick one retention strategy to enhance with payment experiences
   • Test with a small customer segment
   • Measure impact and scale what works
     
     
2. Insights-led innovation 
   
   • Conduct frequent research with your customers to uncover pain points 
   • Look for sustainable rewards that are good for the brand and customer
   • Design rescue offers that solve real customer pain points
     
     
3. Simplify 
   
   • Audit your payment experience from sign-up to reactivation
   • Look for opportunities to reduce clicks and decisions
   • Make payment method switching effortless

The bottom line 

Smart payment experiences aren’t just about processing transactions efficiently, they’re about creating moments of delight that keep customers coming back. Happy returning customers means consistent recurring payments, and ultimately sustainable growth for the business. 

Take a look at your customer journey today: where could smarter payment experiences reduce friction and boost retention?

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With the mandatory shift from the Registered Mandate Service (RMS) to the Registered Mandate (RM) payment stream by 10 March 2025, businesses relying on RMS debit orders must act now to ensure a smooth transition. 

To avoid disruptions and maintain collection efficiency, it is essential to plan ahead. This guide outlines the key steps businesses should take to manage the transition effectively.

Ensuring collection continuity and deprecating RMS payments

Step 1: Assess your RMS reliance

A crucial first step is to conduct an audit to determine the extent of RMS usage in your organisation. Work with your payments partner to identify how many collections are at risk. 

Step 2: Begin the authentication process for RMS debit orders

Once you have a clear picture of your RMS debit order volume, the next step is to reattempt authentication. The goal is to convert as many RMS mandates as possible into authenticated DebiCheck mandates before the cutover date.

This process involves reaching out to customers and prompting them to authenticate their mandates. It may take time, but for businesses with a large volume of RMS mandates early action is critical.

To streamline authentication, businesses can use a combination of TT1 Real-Time and TT1 Delayed authentication methods:

• TT1 Real-Time: Allows authentication while the customer is on the phone, with a response time of 120 seconds via USSD Push or mobile banking.
• TT1 Delayed: Gives the customer more flexibility, allowing them to authenticate up until 22:30 on the same day via online banking, an ATM, or other banking channels.

Using both methods ensures a higher authentication success rate and helps businesses secure mandates well before the deadline.

However, if DebiCheck authentications fail again, then it is necessary to consider alternate payment methods to ensure successful collections: 

• EFT debit order 
• Registered Mandate (when available)
• Recurring card payments

Businesses should consider a multi-channel campaign that highlights the value of the product to customers, with a clear call-to-action to load an alternative payment method. For example, a gym might run a communication campaign to customers with a key message: “Don’t give up your New Year’s resolution. Make sure to add your card details in our secure payment page to avoid any disruptions to your membership plan.” 

Step 3: Analyse the impact on your collections

It is vital to understand how RM’s evening processing schedule will affect your collection success rates. Running a test using EFT debit orders on a known salary date can provide valuable insights.

Although RM will be processed slightly earlier than EFT debit orders, this test will offer an indication of how collections might perform under the new RM payment stream. Comparing success rates between early morning and late processing will help businesses adjust their strategies accordingly.

Step 4: Train your call centre staff

For businesses that rely on call centre agents to manage mandate authentication, training is essential. Agents should understand the technical aspects of DebiCheck and be equipped to guide customers through the authentication process. Precium offers a simple training resource that outlines the customer experience for each of the major issuing banks, supported by frequently asked questions.  

Step 5: Adjust sales and service processes

Some businesses currently provide goods, services, or credit before obtaining DebiCheck authentication, relying on RMS fallback options. With RMS being phased out, this approach may lead to increased failed collections.

It is important to review and, where necessary, adjust sales and service processes to ensure that no goods, services, or credit are provided before mandate authentication is completed. This proactive approach can help reduce collection risks in the RM environment.

Step 6: Ongoing review and support

The transition does not end on 10 March 2025. Businesses will need to continuously review their collection strategies, monitor RM mandate performance, and refine their processes to ensure long-term success.

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South Africa’s collection landscape is undergoing a significant transformation with the mandated shift from the Registered Mandate Service (RMS) to Registered Mandates (RM), effective 10 March 2025. 

This transition aims to modernise the country’s payment infrastructure, enhance security, and align with international banking standards. Businesses that currently rely on RMS for debit order collections must understand the implications of this change and take proactive steps to ensure continuity. 

What is RMS?

RMS was introduced as a temporary solution to facilitate debit order collections when consumer authentication via DebiCheck was not obtained. Under RMS, if a consumer fails to respond to an authentication request, the mandate can still be registered, allowing businesses to process collections without explicit customer approval. However, unlike DebiCheck collections, these transactions are fully disputable, meaning consumers can reverse payments by raising disputes with their bank. Despite this limitation, many businesses have benefited from high success rates on RMS due to these collections being processed in the early collection window. 

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is preparing to implement mandatory modernisation updates to RMS, introducing RM as a new payment rail in the South African National Payment System (NPS) and ultimately replacing the legacy non-authenticated EFT debit order payment method. Critically, RM collections will be processed in the late collection window, meaning businesses will need to enhance their DebiCheck authentication processes to maintain the advantages of early morning processing.

Registered Mandates: a modern solution 

The RM system offers a more dynamic, responsive, and transparent approach to payment processing with benefits for businesses and consumers. 

Flexible collection strategies

• Processed before EFT debits but after DebiCheck collections. 
• Mandates can be registered without prior authentication attempts, and can be registered against business and dual signatory accounts, expanding the scope of collections.
• Limited and full credit tracking for failed transactions.

Better payment status tracking

• Same-day payment collections and confirmation.
• Real-time credit tracking.
• Immediate feedback on transaction status.

Enhanced data standards

• Enhanced originator and recipient identification.
• Supports ISO20022 (a universal message exchange standard for payments across the globe)
• Improves traceability and reduces financial crime risks.

Reduced fraud

• Consumers can view and suspend unwanted mandates
• Consumers are notified of new mandates that have been registered

Understanding Registered Mandates 

While the RM payment method can still act as a fallback to failed DebiCheck authentications, merchants can also submit a RM request directly. RM will also be possible on business and dual signatory accounts, expanding the scope of collections. 

Mandates: 

• ^{Registered Mandates can be requested in real-time; the same DebiCheck authentication service windows apply.}  
• ^{The customer does not need to approve or allow a Registered Mandate request to expire to be valid for collection.} 
• ^{The issuing bank will notify the customer of the registration of a Registered Mandate against their account.} 
• ^{Customers can suspend Registered Mandates and prevent future collections from being made against their accounts.} 
• ^{Registered Mandates can be amended and cancelled by the merchant in real-time.} 

Collections:

• ^{Registered Mandate collections will be executed in the late window 19:00 SAST; the same DebiCheck collection service windows apply.}
• ^{Tracking for Registered Mandates will be run half day from 12:00 to 00:00 SAST; a maximum of 10 tracking days is permitted.} 
• ^{Timing of responses is action date by 23:00 SAST.}
• ^{Timing of settlement is action date + 1 by 05:00 SAST.}
• ^{Registered Mandate collections are disputable.} 
• ^{Registered Mandate collections may fail to process if the mandate was suspended by the customer or cancelled by the merchant.}

Registered Mandates can be upgraded to DebiCheck mandates by way of amendment with authentication via dual participant banks (both issuer and acquirer banks operating on both DebiCheck and RM). However, DebiCheck cannot support business accounts.

This transition arrives at a critical moment for South Africa's financial reputation. With the country working to address its Financial Action Task Force (FATF) grey listing, the RM system represents a significant step towards international compliance and transparency.

What are the benefits and limitations of Registered Mandates? 

The new system brings significant advantages for consumers, fundamentally changing how they interact with their financial commitments. Account holders will gain visibility into their financial mandates and greater control over their transactions. The enhanced transparency of payment processes provides consumers with clearer insights into their financial obligations, whilst strengthening their protection against unauthorised debits.

However, the transition from RMS to RM presents several potential challenges for businesses:

1. Collection success rates: Late window processing may lead to lower success rates, as consumers might withdraw funds before RM debit orders are processed. 
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2. Increased disputability: Unlike DebiCheck collections, RM collections are fully disputable, requiring businesses to implement robust mandate management to minimise reversals. 
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3. Operational impact: Businesses must adapt their systems, processes, and reconciliation to align with the new RM framework. 

Practical implications for businesses reliant on RMS

From 10 March 2025, DebiCheck collections for RMS mandates can no longer be submitted on DebiCheck. Instead, they must be submitted on RM. South African banks are currently migrating RMS mandates to RM mandates to enable this transition. 

This change presents a challenge to businesses dependent on RMS collections and the impact of it needs to be assessed both technically and operationally. To start, businesses should evaluate their current reliance on RMS collections to quantify the potential impact. 

Recurring payment businesses are deeply reliant on the ability to successfully accept consistent, secure payments from customers. To ensure sustainable customer acquisition and retention, it is important for businesses to carefully consider the payment methods offered to customers at the start of their journey.

The category of ‘recurring payment’ business models is broad, stretching from low-value subscriptions such as on-demand delivery or streaming media services to high-value transactions such as insurance premiums or mobile data plans. 

Different payment methods offer distinct benefits – understanding these enables businesses to select an approach based on their transactional requirements, cost considerations, and customer experience goals. Precium offers merchants four payment options for processing recurring transactions: card, EFT debit order, DebiCheck, and Capitec Pay. 

In this article, we explore each of these options, covering their benefits, limitations, and ideal use cases to help executives make informed decisions about which recurring payment methods best align with their business needs.

Card Payments

Benefits

Card payments are an ideal option for businesses that value speed and customer convenience. With real-time processing at any time of day, card payments offer a seamless experience for both businesses and consumers. Card payments are typically tokenized using a once-off 3D Secure (3DS) one-time-pin (OTP), or selected businesses can make use of fully frictionless processing. When authenticated with 3DS, card payments are difficult to dispute, offering protection to merchants. Businesses making use of network tokenization also benefit from automated card-on-file updates when a card is lost or expires, removing the need for customers to manually update their card details.Card payments also allow for variable transaction amounts month-on-month and variable frequencies, offering full flexibility to merchants. 

Limitations

Despite these advantages, card payments may not be the most cost-effective solution for high-value transactions, as they incur a percentage-based fee. Additionally, card payments are subject to a moderate fraud risk, which may require businesses to implement extra security measures to protect against unauthorised charges. Businesses also need to consider the scope of their Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) compliance; working with a certified PCI DSS payment provider ensures that sensitive card details are securely captured and stored, without introducing additional compliance requirements for internal teams.  

Best For

Lower-value, high frequency or usage-based subscriptions, especially those where customer convenience and transaction speed are top priorities. This method is an attractive option for digital-first customers seeking a streamlined experience, particularly younger South Africans with less experience with debit order payments. Industry examples include on-demand delivery, software subscriptions, and streaming platforms.

EFT Debit Orders

Benefits

EFT debit orders offer a cost-effective option for recurring payments, particularly suited for high-value transactions and business-to-business (B2B) collections. To set up an EFT debit order, businesses create a “mandate”, where customers give permission for their account to be debited under specific terms and conditions. For EFT debit orders, mandates can be paper-based, voice-based (agreed on the phone), or digital. This method also allows for variable transaction values and all frequencies, giving businesses the ability to adapt payment amounts based on usage or other factors.

Limitations

EFT debit orders carry a higher dispute risk compared to other payment methods – customers can dispute transactions up to 40 days after the transaction date and when they do, the payment is automatically refunded. This presents a significant credit risk to businesses, particularly those serving customers with low, variable incomes. Beyond 40 days, customers can still dispute the charge however merchants have the opportunity to contest the dispute.

EFT debit orders are subject to bank cut-off times, where transactions are processed between specific times of day and not on Sundays and public holidays. Payments are processed in the “late collection window” (after DebiCheck transactions), which results in higher rates of failed payments. Failed transactions can take up to 72 hours to be confirmed by banks, impacting cash flow and reconciliation for businesses. In addition, consumers are also charged a high penalty fee for failed collections, which impacts customer experience and can erode their ability to pay for the service. 

Best For

High-value collections and B2B transactions, where transaction cost is a significant consideration. EFT debit orders are ideal for businesses seeking a cost-effective recurring payment option, where there is relatively low risk in their transaction book. Industry examples include investment contributions, business utility bills, and internet service providers.

DebiCheck

Benefits

DebiCheck is designed to give businesses and consumers greater security and assurance by enabling customers to authorise mandates electronically. This reduces the risk of unauthorised or fraudulent debits for consumers, while offering greater dispute protection for businesses. While also subject to bank cut-off times, DebiCheck is processed in the “early collection window”, typically resulting in higher success rates than EFT debit order. When payments fail, businesses can track customers’ accounts for up to ten days and automatically deduct funds when the account balance is topped up. DebiCheck offers fixed, variable and usage-based options for collection value, which is stipulated in the mandate. 

Limitations

DebiCheck is more costly than EFT debit order, with an upfront authentication fee and higher transaction costs. While the authentication process should in theory offer more dispute protection, many customers do not accept the mandate request, which increases disputability. Planned changes in the national payment system mean that these non-authenticated mandates (“Registered Mandates”) will be processed in the late collection window, potentially impacting success rates for merchants. Currently, DebiCheck does not work on business accounts with more than one signatory, limiting its applicability. Additionally, frequency options are restricted making it less suitable for businesses needing custom payment schedules.

Best For

Consumer-to-Business collections and businesses with high-risk transaction books. DebiCheck  Industry examples include insurance, lending, and vehicle leasing. 

Capitec Pay

Benefits

Capitec Pay is a secure, real-time payment solution designed specifically for Capitec customers, making it highly convenient for businesses with a large Capitec client base. This option offers no bank cut-off times and is not disputable, providing businesses with greater transaction security. Additionally, Capitec Pay supports variable transaction values, allowing companies to manage a range of subscription types and usage-based payments.

Limitations

Capitec Pay’s exclusivity to Capitec customers limits its reach compared to other methods. Moreover, customers can cancel their mandates and mandates expire at the end of the set frequency, which may require businesses to renew them periodically to ensure continuity.

Best For

Subscription-based businesses looking to serve a Capitec-focused customer base. Capitec Pay is an excellent choice for enterprises prioritising transaction security and real-time processing. Industry examples include software subscriptions, gaming, and streaming services. 

Comparing Key Attributes

Authentication  

Each method employs a unique form of authentication. Card payments use 3DS OTP, while EFT debit orders offer multiple mandate options, including paper, voice, and electronic mandates. DebiCheck mandates are authenticated electronically, while Capitec Pay relies on app-based authentication for secure processing.

Frequency  

Card, EFT debit orders, and Capitec Pay support any frequency, giving businesses full flexibility. In contrast, DebiCheck restricts frequency based on the mandate and options may be limited depending on the payment provider. 

Disputes  

Disputability is a critical consideration for businesses managing recurring payments. Card payments are challenging to dispute, providing a secure payment channel. EFT debit orders are disputable, while DebiCheck is disputable only if mandate terms are not honoured. Capitec Pay stands out as entirely non-disputable, offering complete payment assurance for businesses.

Processing Speed  

The processing speed varies significantly among these methods. Card payments and Capitec Pay offer real-time processing. DebiCheck is subject to bank cut-off times, but is processed in the early collection window and offers real-time collection results. EFT debit orders are both subject to bank cut-off times and processed in the late collection window, with delayed processing results for failed payments.

Fee Structure  

Card and Capitec Pay operate on a percentage-based fee model, which may be more costly for high-value transactions. EFT debit orders and DebiCheck, utilise a flat fee structure, making transaction costs more predictable and potentially more affordable for businesses with high recurring payment values. However, EFT debit order and DebiCheck have bank penalty fees for businesses and consumers, which impact customer experience and introduce “hidden costs”.

Selecting the Right Payment Method for Your Business

For enterprise businesses in South Africa, selecting the right recurring payment method requires balancing security, cost, and customer experience. Here’s a summary:

By carefully assessing the benefits, limitations, and ideal use cases for each payment method, businesses can optimise their recurring payment processes to better serve customers, improve revenue assurance and enhance operational efficiency. By partnering with Precium, businesses can selectively expose different payment options to customers based on predefined criteria plus tokenize a back-up payment method to increase success rates and recovery of failed payments. 

Get in touch with us to collaborate on your recurring payments strategy.

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Growing a subscription-based business is notoriously difficult. Churn – both involuntary and voluntary – is a significant barrier to building a sustainable, profitable business. Payment optimisation plays an important role in reducing churn and stabilising growth. 

Subscription businesses need to recover a customer acquisition cost over multiple months (known as the payback period) and when customers leave, it's a net loss for the business considering not only the upfront cost invested but also all lost future potential revenue. 

In this article, we explore the most common payment challenges faced by subscription businesses and how they can be addressed. 

Unpacking the Subscription economy in South Africa 

According to the IFWG, subscriptions are one of the fast-growing segments in cross-border e-commerce. “In South Africa, it is estimated there are more than 7 million active subscriptions, and the local subscription economy is estimated to be worth $530 million (~R8.6 billion) – and is anticipated to reach over $800 million by 2025.”

Globally, subscriptions follow a similar pattern as the international subscription economy is expected to reach $1.5 trillion (R24 trillion) by 2025 from $650 billion in 2020.

Both global and local subscription businesses must consider their payments experience and identify areas for improvement to capitalise on this growth opportunity, prevent churn and stem revenue leakage. 

By optimising payments for recurring growth, businesses can achieve higher customer lifetime value and profitability. 

Five common challenges in subscription payments 

1. Customer churn due to failed payments

Up to 50% of subscription payment failures are caused by expired or lost cards while a further 30% are caused by insufficient funds.. When a payment fails, subscriptions are often cancelled for otherwise loyal customers (known as involuntary churn). Customers must manually update their payment details, creating friction and resulting in customer drop-off. With more than 60% of subscription revenue attributable to renewals, addressing involuntary churn is critical. 

2. “Friendly” or chargeback fraud

“Friendly” fraud occurs when a customer disputes a legitimate charge they made on their card.

Many customers treat subscription payments with a ‘set it and forget it’ approach. This has a dual consequence: first, customers may dispute a transaction because they do not recognise it having forgotten that they subscribed or forgotten to cancel. Second, customers may overestimate their usage of the subscription and dispute the charge due to buyer’s remorse – the classic example being gym memberships. According to Sift, two-thirds of consumers have filed disputes, and of that subset, nearly 1 in 4 (23%) admitted to participating in friendly fraud.

3. Security and privacy vulnerabilities 

‍Subscription businesses face specific threats from a security perspective due to storing the payment information of their customers. The common risks faced include data theft, unauthorised access, and system breaches.
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This means that any merchant who processes payments and stores the payment information of their customers needs to be compliant with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS). To do this, merchants need to either build internal capabilities or work with a payments partner that can ensure security and compliance.

4. Localisation challenges‍

The advantage of a digital subscription business is its ability to serve a global audience. Payment localisation is critical to successful global expansion and customer conversion. This includes making available locally relevant payment methods and card schemes, multi-currency checkout pages, and dynamic translation based on the customer’s location. 

5. Manual or inefficient reconciliation ‍

Reconciliation in a subscription business can become complex as finance teams grapple with different values for different offers, pro-rata rates, and ongoing up– or downgrades. Doing this manually is not only time consuming, but prone to error and inefficient. Automated financial operations are central to detecting and resolving problems, effectively managing cash flow, and making strategic decisions for improvement.

What is network tokenization? 

Tokenization is an encryption process by which sensitive card data is replaced with a unique string, called a token, that acts as a reference to the underlying data. 

While tokenization has become the mainstream standard for secure online payment processing, most tokens today are gateway tokens issued by a single processor and are only valid for that processor. When the underlying card is lost or stolen, gateway tokens become invalid. Moreover, the tokens cannot be used on other payment gateways in the event of downtime, and keep merchants locked in even when they experience unreliable service.

Fast becoming the global standard, network tokens represent the next frontier in tokenization.

Network tokens are generated by the card schemes (such as Visa, Mastercard) when a consumer uses their card. The card schemes are responsible for maintaining the tokens so that they remain valid, even if the underlying card data changes or expires. Network tokens are interoperable across payment processors and are encrypted throughout the payment process, offering more security to consumers and merchants.

Optimise recurring payments with Precium’s network token solution

Network tokenization is an excellent choice for subscription-based businesses to increase customer retention and lifetime value.

Challenge: Customer churn due to outdated payment details‍

• Solution: Minimise involuntary churn with automatic updating of card-on-file information when a consumer’s card is replaced or expires
  

Challenge: Customer churn due to failed payments

• Solution: Higher success rates due to reduced false declines and ability to cascade failed transactions to another processor in real-time

Challenge: “Friendly” or chargeback fraud

• Solution: Reduce friendly fraud or chargebacks as cardholders authenticate recurring transactions
  

Challenge: Security and privacy vulnerabilities

• Solution: Reduce risk of data breaches or fraud with end-to-end encryption with tokens stored in our PCI DSS Level 1 vault

Challenge: Localisation challenges

• ‍Solution: Own your customer tokens that can be used on multiple gateways and acquirers enabling you to switch processors as needed

Connect with us to understand how network tokenization can optimise your subscription payments and enable sustainable growth.

Explore other Precium solutions for optimising payments 

• Solve localisation challenges with smart routing with wide range of payment methods 
• Automate reconciliation to improve efficiency and accuracy 
• Collaborate with an expert partner in fraud and risk management 

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• Digital payment innovation has followed two distinct waves to achieve mainstream adoption.
• Now, many retailers are left with bloated payment channels that are expensive, complex, and overwhelming.
• The next wave of payments will see this move towards optimising payments solutions based on customer data that will increase ROI and the retail experience.

The payments industry has exploded in the last ten years - with much of the expansion and innovation coming from the African continent. This means merchants and customers currently have more choices than ever. And despite room for growth, the numbers are staggering. 

In recent years, Africa’s electronic payments industry generated approximately $24 billion in revenue, the majority of which came from roughly 47 billion domestic e-payment transactions. This has led to more than $650 million invested in payments within the fintech sector since 2011. These billions of transactions have travelled through dozens of recognised gateways or channels that sprung up as fintech companies focused on increasing access.  

However, as access expanded, it evolved into “choice”, and businesses sought to offer customers the largest possible selection of payment options in an effort to increase conversion rates. This strategy was based on the widely cited research that 56% of customers who do not see their preferred method at checkout “would be permanently put off shopping on a site” – representing a lost sale and lost potentially loyal customer.

This pursuit of choice has now reached a tipping point  — the cost to integrate and maintain the full universe of payment options has skyrocketed, becoming unmanageable for many merchants. At the same time, the implementation of payment methods can hurt rather than help conversion rates by overwhelming consumers . As consulting firm McKinsey & Company points out, fintech in Africa is now at the end of the beginning. For payments, this means an unavoidable shift away from offering every possible payment option to data-driven payment optimisation that signals good news for both businesses and consumers.

From access to optimisation: the three waves of payment innovation

Historically, payment innovation focused on developing payment methods that could serve as an alternative to cash to foster greater financial inclusion.

During this “access” phase, technology like mobile money, vouchers, and buy now, pay later proliferated. It was particularly important for the adoption of digital payments within East and West Africa, with mobile money undoubtedly the hero during this time.

To capitalise on this increasing digital payment access, merchants started offering customers choices, and lots of them, of the various methods that had appeared to expand the base of potential customers they could reach.

Precium COO Nicole Dunn says there was a noticeable shift to a “choice” wave where businesses felt obligated to include as many payment options and channels as possible. But while this may initially have increased shopper conversion, it quickly became burdensome for many retailers and ultimately also overwhelmed shoppers.

“As a consequence of the choice era, many businesses have far too many payment methods that are seldom used by their customers. These merchants are often reluctant to retire payment methods, even when they clearly deliver negative returns on investment,” says Dunn.

As a result of this push to include as many options as possible, without focusing on relevance and optimisation of their payment capabilities, many businesses have seen an increase in the cost of transactions, especially for lower-value basket sizes. 

“The operational cost and complexity of managing multiple methods is now frustrating many businesses – and ironically, at Precium we have found that too many methods on a checkout page actually decrease conversion,” says Dunn.

Optimising payments is a critical business priority

 Until now, merchants have accepted that payments will be cost centres — necessary expenses, which were exaggerated during the choice phase.

 Although historically, businesses have thought it important to cover all bases with as many payment options as possible, regardless of the clutter and cost, this is starting to shift. The third wave of payment innovation looks to transform payment technologies from financial plumbing to critical enablers of business strategy and customer experience.

 “In the next five to ten years, we believe merchants will become more strategic about the payment methods they expose to their customers. Businesses are already consolidating their systems and customer data sources to streamline operations and enable end-to-end personalisation; we expect that payment experiences will soon follow,” says Precium CEO, Ruaan Botha. 

Through optimising the checkout and payments experience, retailers can increase conversion rates by 10-20% and customer satisfaction by up to 20%. Mature businesses are already adopting solutions that help abstract the technical complexity of managing multiple payment options and offer greater checkout functionality – like selectively exposing payment methods based on predefined parameters. Many are recalibrating payment options to focus on payment performance, customisation, and reliability, in an effort to build consumer trust. 

 Inevitably, this leads to sunsetting payment methods with low ROI. In doing so, businesses are not only streamlining their checkout pages and saving costs, they’re also avoiding the pitfalls of the paradox of choice, which argues that the more options customers have, the less satisfied they feel with their decisions.

 This paradox suggests that facing too many options, especially in a pressurised environment like a store checkout phase, requires unnecessary cognitive effort. This can lead to decision fatigue and, in the case of payments, abandoned carts. 

 During the third wave of payments, businesses are starting to lean on data to ensure customers see personalised payment options they recognise and want to use.

 “The impact of this is shown to increase conversion, as well as reliability, speed, security and transaction efficiency. Businesses are doubling down on providers that can selectively expose payment options, while offering end-to-end redundancy to ensure their customers can checkout, even when a specific bank or payment provider is down,” says Botha.

How a payments strategy can help

 The high-level theory behind the new wave of payments might be easy to understand. Still, its effective implementation relies on a sound payments strategy that incorporates customer data and business objectives.

 “Consumers are increasingly showing strong appetites for personalised experiences across various business touchpoints, and it’s important not to leave payments behind. A well-crafted payments strategy is more than just a nice-to-have — it can help businesses focus their efforts on the initiatives that will drive business value, improve cash flow, enhance customer experience, mitigate risks, and remain competitive,” says Dunn.

 As we leave the early boom phase of fintech and payments in Africa, merchants now have an opportunity to leverage customer data and make intentional, strategic choices about which payment methods to promote to improve conversion, ROI, and the customer experience.

 “Merchants that combine customer and transaction data can capture additional value and otherwise lost revenue, and in doing so, payments can shift from a cost centre to a revenue enabler,” says Dunn. “It’s these deep levels of insight, and the opportunity for optimising custom, commercially viable payments solutions, that makes this next wave particularly exciting.”

The advent of e-commerce has fundamentally shifted retailers’ operations – from fulfilment, to product listing, to marketing. Reconciliation is no exception. While the focus on front-end optimisation and conversion has contributed to accelerated growth, it has also led to multiplied complexity in reconciliation and revenue recognition. Without optimising their reconciliation and allocation processes, businesses face increasing operational costs, revenue leakage write-offs, and financial and reputational risk. 

In this article, we unpack how reconciliation has changed in the e-commerce era and how retailers can optimise their financial operations to streamline this escalating complexity. 

Like payments, reconciliation complexity is multiplying

The South African online retail market grew to R71 billion in turnover in 2023, representing a 29% increase from 2022, and 6% of the total retail sector. In the battle to increase sales and conversion, merchants have invested in multiple online payment options, such as digital wallets (e.g. Apple Pay), instant EFT, vouchers, and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options. Many online businesses now rely on multiple payment gateways, acquirers, and methods to support their operations across multiple channels. 

Customer optionality creates significant challenges for back-end processes such as reconciliation. For an e-commerce business to gain an accurate picture of their cash flow, they need to match every online sale and transaction with their bank records. With growing complexity in payments, this process is becoming increasingly time-consuming, costly, and prone to error. 

Finance teams must sift through thousands of transactions across channels, payment providers, and systems, while factoring in multiple order tracking and fulfilment partners, customer returns and exchanges, and payment disputes. 

The consequence is more than increased effort – accurate reconciliation has a direct impact on the bottom line. Without optimised processes, online retailers are unable to accurately assess cash flow and detect revenue leakage. Non-standardised or manual reconciliation increases operational costs and risk of human error, eating into internal resources and eroding profit margins. 

These inefficiencies can also impact customer experience – inaccurate allocation of payments can result in delays in goods being delivered to customers, which erodes trust and leads to reputational damage. 

How must businesses adapt for e-commerce reconciliation needs? 

Based on our engagements with leading online retailers, there are five important considerations for finance teams to address reconciliation complexity and future-proof their financial operations. 

1. Standardised file formats
   To meet diverse customer payment preferences and uptime requirements, online businesses typically work with multiple payment methods, providers, and acquirers. Each of these methods and partners have different settlement times, fee structures, and result file formats indicating what is due to the merchant. In addition, merchants selling across multiple channels may have to load these different file formats in different systems and locations.
   
   To ensure that these payments can be accurately reconciled against bank statements, merchants need a consistent file format that can be consumed by their internal allocated systems. This data collation should be consistent, with automatic pattern checking to identify any changes or anomalies.
   
   
2. End-to-end transaction traceability
   For online businesses, a significant part of customer satisfaction lies in the ability to maintain an effective and smart returns management process. Speed, visibility, and control are the main pillars of the process and payments have a large role to play. 
   
   What are the steps of a return? When an online retailer takes a payment, it is a promise to deliver. The order flows from the sale into fulfilment. Any number of scenarios can play out from this point:
   
   Let’s use a national online retailer as an example: A customer purchases a product on sale. Due to a disconnect between the website platform and the fulfilment warehouse system, the sold product is actually out of stock. The warehouse needs to initiate a refund because it cannot fulfil the order, but they need to ensure the right amount is refunded. This means ensuring that the sale value is refunded, as opposed to the standard price. The business may have also taken a delivery fee with the purchase. This would usually not be refunded if the customer had received the item, but in this case it should be. Additionally, the customer could have purchased multiple products requiring only a partial refund. Once the amount is calculated, the business needs to deal with where the money is refunded to. Many online retailers resolve this step through the use of a wallet which leads to increased internal compliance and customer dissatisfaction. Can the transaction be reversed or does it need to be repaid to the customer’s account? Each step of this process results in an update to the order and allocation, and often the biggest challenge is detecting where in the process something has gone wrong.
   
   In order to uphold a smart returns management process, online retailers need a payment system that offers full traceability of transactions and errors. This enables internal teams and external providers to detect and reconcile transactions as they flow from and back to customers in the process of a refund.
   
   In the case of a return or exchange, the process becomes more complex as it involves a delivery integration or price adjustment, sometimes occurring across channels (i.e. a customer may purchase a product online but choose to return it in store). In order to properly reconcile many variables, online retailers need a payment provider with the capability to map payments backwards and forwards, without inhibiting the business’ ability to offer diverse options for payments, fulfilment, and delivery.
   
   

3. Omnichannel attribution and unification
   70% of retailers in the WWW Online Retail Report said that in-store payments were critical for driving sales as customers often “window shop” online but want to engage with the product before they buy. Similarly, a customer may purchase a product online but want to return it to a store.
   
   This requires that businesses can gain a unified view of online and in-store orders, and reconcile data consistently across the different selling platforms and payment channels. This comprehensive view can also help merchandising teams to gain a clearer picture of sales cycles and attribution, and ensure a seamless experience for customers transitioning between online and offline channels.
   
   
4. Dynamic pricing and currency conversion
   As businesses strive to sell to the right customer at the right time for the right price, responsive payment processing and reconciliation become critical. Poor planning and management in pricing and promotions can lead to significant financial losses and customer dissatisfaction.
   
   What is dynamic pricing? Also known as demand or time-based pricing, this refers to product pricing based on various external factors, including current market demand, the season, supply changes and price bounding.
   
   A dynamic pricing platform offers online retailers the ability to design advanced business rules based on strategic objectives to determine the optimum price that will satisfy customers and maximise sales and profits. This discount or promotion is then accurately tracked and applied. In order to reconcile these transactions, discounts need to be accurately tracked. As the business grows, manual reconciliation will become impossible – even with an internal team of analysts. This is further complicated when merchants sell into multiple markets, as actual settlement values may vary based on exchange rate fluctuations from the time of the sale. 
   
   
5. Thick versus Thin Ledger
   Thick versus Thin Ledger refers to the amount of data populated and analysis performed in a company’s general ledger. Traditionally, retailers have used a thin general ledger, where the amount of data stored in the general ledger is minimised in favour of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. A thick general ledger contains channel, segment and product level data; details for cost of goods sold; and inventory balances. Transactions are typically recorded at the individual level with daily posting. While robust, these systems can become clunky and costly to manage, putting technical and operational strain on the business.
   
   In the transition from in-store to online commerce, the historic one-to-one mapping of payment to allocation has been disintermediated and has been replaced with multiple mapping requirements. Finance teams will either need to invest in ERP tools that can cater for multiple payment mappings, extend their general ledgers to cater for these new complexities, or create sub-ledgers specifically designed to support omnichannel reconciliation. 
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How to detect reconciliation inefficiencies

‍Part of the challenge with the growing complexity in reconciliation is that issues can be harder to detect. Given the impact on financial control and customer trust, how can Finance leaders tell if their business is being impacted by suboptimal reconciliation processes?

Here are four signs to look out for: 

• High operational costs and manual work, including significant time and resources spent on data entry, cross-checking, and error correction. 
• Growing customer complaints, disputes, and churn due to payment issues and allocation. 
• Regular revenue discrepancies and / or write-offs in financial statements due to revenue leakage. 
• Rising costs associated with customer support and financial operations.  
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With the right payment partner and reconciliation tools, such as Precium’s automated reconciliation engine, businesses can consolidate and automate financial operations and perform multi-method reconciliation across sales channels. 

Payment platforms that include omnichannel reconciliation enable merchants to consolidate disparate data sources and create end-to-end transaction traceability throughout the order to cash lifecycle. This in turn enables finance teams to automate complex processes for greater accuracy, efficiency, and control, and enable early detection of revenue leakage or allocation errors that could impact customer experience. 

While reconciliation may be “invisible” to the customer, it does not mean it is not critical to a successful e-commerce operation. Merchants that invest in financial operations alongside customer experience levers will see significant returns in their ability to serve customers at scale.

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How Precium can help

Precium offers e-commerce enterprises the ability to streamline their financial operations with automated multi-method reconciliation, configured to bespoke business needs.

This includes:

A unified dashboard for all payment methods and providers, streamlining financial operations and customer support 

1. Real-time feed of transaction data and payment statuses, which can be filtered by product, date, segment, brand, and other parameters
2. Custom webhooks to update merchants’ internal systems in real-time 
3. Full traceability of transactions and errors 

Consolidated mark-off file, with automated bank statement reconciliation

1. Consistent mark-off file containing transaction statuses and their fees reconciled to merchants’ bank statements for successful and unsuccessful transactions
2. Exception reports for transaction-level investigation where bank records do not align to expected settlement values
3. Pattern validation of external mark-off files (e.g. alternative payment method files) to detect format inconsistencies, duplicates, or field changes

Real-time insight into disputes, with best-in class operational support

1. Automated dispute notifications and alerts, to ensure timely notice of a potential dispute to supply evidence
2. Centralised data repository of transactions and customer interactions, and transaction metadata that can be useful in disputes
3. Analysis of past dispute outcomes to gather insight and predict the best response strategies for future disputes
4. Standardised, compliant dispute response templates for common dispute types
    

Get in touch to explore how your business can optimise reconciliation and save hours of manual effort.

Learn how smart routing can enhance payment performance and efficiency, with increased success rates, reduced fraud, and processing cost optimisation. 

In 2023, Africa added more new e-commerce shoppers to the world than any other region. In South Africa alone, the value of e-commerce transactions is expected to surge to $12 billion (R225 billion) in 2025, catalysed by changing consumer behaviour, widespread internet penetration, and market entry of global brands such as Amazon.

As online payments continue to grow exponentially, value can be captured and compounded. But today, merchants are locked into outdated payment systems that lack the agility, scalability, and intelligence to process high volumes of transactions. This results in businesses losing value through payment downtime, cart abandonment, hidden fees, and lost customer loyalty. 

Instead of focusing on what they do best, businesses are forced to build and maintain increasingly complex payment operations, hindering growth, increasing costs, and impacting customer experience.

To maintain pace with the rapidly changing online commerce landscape, merchants must invest in payment performance. This starts with offering customers the most relevant payment methods, with the capability to intelligently route transactions to optimise success rates, conversion, and payment efficiency. 

What is smart routing?

Smart routing is the capability of a payment platform to selectively expose payment methods or providers, and to direct transactions to different payment processors or acquirers during the payment process. It allows merchants to create a set of routing rules that are applied to each transaction based on parameters such as currency, basket size, card brand, BIN number and issuer. 

At Precium, we distinguish between two categories of routing:

1. Static routing: Predefined rules that selectively expose payment options and / or route transactions based on factors such as processing fees, basket size, currency, and BIN number. For example, a merchant that aims to optimise transaction costs may route transactions with a basket size greater than $75 to payment processors with a flat fee structure, while transactions with a basket size less than $75 are routed to processors and methods with a percentage-based fee. 
2. Dynamic routing: Responsive rules that block selected payment options and / or reroute transactions based on real-time performance data, such as acquirer downtime or failure thresholds. For example, a merchant may automatically reroute a failed transaction to an alternative payment processor without disrupting the customer experience. 

Merchants adopt routing to optimise payment performance, including increasing their authorisation and acceptance rates, mitigating the impact of payment downtime on customers, and optimising transaction costs or settlement times. 

Why use smart routing with Precium? 

Increase success rates 

Smart routing enables merchants to increase authorisation and acceptance rates through sending transactions to the processor and acquirer with the highest probability of success. With Precium, merchants can also cascade transactions in real-time to prevent gateway or acquirer downtime from impacting their customer experience. Our routing engine also allows merchants to implement retry strategies for soft declined transactions, boosting conversion rates and recovering otherwise lost revenue by up to 20%. 

Optimise processing costs

Through selecting the most cost-effective route, merchants can reduce their processing fees by up to 40%. Merchants adopting smart routing can also save on hidden fees such as declined transaction costs and retry attempts charged by single-gateway payment service providers. 

Increase conversion and repeat purchases

Merchants leveraging smart routing can capture additional revenue through increasing customer conversion and repeat purchases. Cart abandonment is reduced by offering customers the most relevant payment methods to suit their context and preferences. With 62% of customers opting not to return to a website after experiencing a failed payment, increased success rates ensure merchants can capture otherwise lost revenue and future purchases. 

Minimise fraud while managing false positives

Smart routing can mitigate chargebacks and fraud by enabling merchants to decide when to require additional authentication measures, such as 3D Secure, based on transaction attributes and customer behaviour. This can be complemented with merchant’s customer data, such as purchase history and basket contents. This intelligent approach to fraud helps to protect honest customers, while reducing false declines that hamper conversion and repeat purchases.

Diversification out-of-the-box

Smart routing ensures business continuity when one gateway or acquirer is down, by enabling merchants to route to an alternative. But integrating and managing multiple payment providers requires substantial investment and ongoing effort. Precium abstracts this complexity with built-in integrations with best-in-class payment processors, acquirers, and alternative payment methods. Merchants can leverage our pre-negotiated pricing or bring their existing commercial relationships. This means that merchants can get set up with smart routing quickly, with limited ongoing technical and operational effort required to maintain payment performance. 

How does smart routing work? 

Precium’s payment page is connected to our rules engine, which allows merchants to use relevant attributes to decide which payment methods to display. Popular attributes include currency or BIN number for location-based routing; transaction amount for processing cost optimisation; and card brand for authorisation and success optimisation. Merchants who prefer greater control can selectively expose specific payment methods using white-listing options when creating a purchase instruction. 

When a customer initiates a payment, Precium’s routing engine analyses the transaction details based on the configured static and dynamic routing rules to determine the optimal route. If the transaction fails, our routing engine can cascade the transaction to an alternative processor or acquirer without disrupting the customer experience. 

Precium’s  team partners with our clients during the onboarding and integration process to recommend static and dynamic routing rules based on the merchant’s business model, customer base, and priorities. Examples of smart routing applications include:

• Exposing locally relevant payment options based on currency or BIN number to increase customer conversion.
• Splitting transaction traffic between multiple processors and acquirers during peak periods such as Black Friday. 
• Rerouting failed transactions to an alternative processor to reduce cart abandonment and involuntary churn. 

Who benefits from smart routing? 

Any business looking to optimise customer conversion and repeat purchases can benefit from smart routing solutions. For businesses with high volumes and complex payment needs, smart routing is increasingly non-negotiable. These merchants include:

1. Large retailers and e-commerce sites: Given their high processing volumes and peak periods such as pay-day sales, large retailers and e-commerce sites can significantly increase conversion rates and cart abandonment with smart routing. 
2. Multi-market companies: Merchants operating in multiple markets can increase speed to market and streamline complex financial flows across multiple channels and geographies. Through exposing the most locally-relevant payment options, merchants can optimise customer experience and increase conversion and success rates. 
3. On-demand delivery and mobility platforms: For on-demand platforms, payment success rate is a critical factor for customer experience and capturing value. Smart routing ensures a seamless customer experience and business continuity, mitigating the impact of downtime on revenue realisation. 

Ready to get started? Book a sales consultation to learn how smart routing can optimise your payment performance.

Alloys can be found all around us – from your familiar office building to rockets destined for space exploration. They are defined as: a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. The mixture of elements is precisely controlled to produce a desirable result.

They are in application adaptable, useful, strong, and vibrant. In the early days of brainstorming new names, we were inspired by the concept of an alloy as a representation of the stability and adaptability required to support the complex payments needs of the modern enterprise and their customers. 

The Precium (pronounced press-ee-um) brand identity was a collaboration between internal teams and experienced creative agencies. Explore the intention and ideas behind each decision. 

Choosing a name

Precium’s defining belief is that payments should be a revenue enabler, not a cost centre. To do this skilfully at scale for enterprise businesses, we immerse the Precium team in our merchants’ business. Each business has its own complex set of needs and priorities; to unlock the full potential of payments infrastructure at scale requires in-depth engagement and collaboration. 

This coming together of strengths, like an alloy, is what inspired our name. 

What do we bring to the table? 

Stability > a configurable, reliable payment system that handles complexity for merchants

Partnership > a customer-centric approach to building, implementing, and optimising

Security > trust in our teams’ ability to build and maintain world-class systems and operations 

Precium immediately rose to the top of the list. It means ‘pay’, ‘reward’, or ‘worth’ in Latin; this simplicity resonated with our ambition to streamline and simplify payments for our merchants, and aligned with our values of seeking truth and transparency. It also alludes to a platinum alloy with a precious metal content of almost 90% – embodying our core principle of being a brand and team of substance and quality, here to last the times. This name evoked an immediate sense of the texture of the identity, shown lower down in the metallic accents and gradients. 

Logo and brandmark design

Our new logo encapsulates our company’s core values, mission, and ambition, representing Precium as an alloy: an addition that increases stability, resilience, and responsiveness to ever-changing payment trends and points of failure.

Each element of the brandmark symbolises a principle and together, they represent Precium. 

The circle, symbolising unity and perfection, reflects our commitment to creating a unified payments system that minimises complexity and payment failure. It represents our core values of “winning the match, together” and the spirit of partnership we embrace within our team and with our clients. 

The square, known for its representation of structure and order, symbolises Precium's robust technical foundation, payment performance reliability, and delivery of the highest service excellence.

Combining these seemingly contradictory elements highlights the unique combination of stability, flexibility, and agility required in the modern enterprise payment stack to reach and retain more customers.

The brandmark is also reminiscent of the Revio logo – a nod to our history.

Textures

As flat, minimal design took centre stage in brand identity building, gradients fell out of popularity. But as most things do, gradients have once again caught the trend wave. 

In order to make a strategic, long-term decision, we explore how gradients could bring texture and cohesion to our brand system. 

Our gradients are used as backgrounds and are by default: non-linear, with at least three colours and grain. They bring a sense of motion to our web design. (see above in the brandmark) 

Our visual library also contains alloy-inspired textures to bring our new name to life. The metallic accents seek to modernise the brand identity, balancing a palette with the potential to lean whimsical rather than contemporary. 

Type

Precium’s new font, Rethink Sans, was created by Hans Thiessen for a Vancouver independent creative agency to “help everyone design with greater confidence and craft in the Google workspace”. During the rebrand process, we explored several fonts searching for the right mix of clarity, flexibility, and dynamism. 

From commercial to corporate usage, Rethink Sans gives us the ability to dial our tone up or down in formality. Its variety in weight and language support sealed the deal. 

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Colours

Our core colours are purple variants. Purple is a brand colour found across categories: from confectionery (“Cadbury”) to sports (“LA Lakers”) and even tertiary education institutions (“New York University”). This confirms its ability to be an adaptable colour. 

Precium’s clients also transition between categories; from Insurance, to E-commerce, and Retail, we enable and optimise payments for businesses of all kinds. So, in differing contexts, our identity needs to be adaptable without losing its essence. Purple can denote creativity, wealth, leadership, and trust simultaneously. 

We decided to add a pop of delight to our colour identity. The complete palette sees the addition of accent colours: a gradient silver and turquoise. 

The rebrand represented a unique opportunity to reflect on our business and brand. While identity building for Precium has been an absorbing exploration of how we show up in the market, the real work comes in how we serve and build for our clients. 

We are the first African payment platform purpose-built for enterprise. We aim to have a global impact helping businesses optimise payment performance, automate financial operations, and craft extraordinary customer experiences through our modular payment platform. 

“What started as a venture to provide world-class payment technologies to South African merchants has since become a platform to enable global merchants to access emerging African markets. While our operations remain firmly rooted in South Africa, more and more of our clients are companies abroad. Our rebrand aims to capture our evolution into a globally competitive payment infrastructure platform, purpose-built for enterprise scale,” says Nicole Dunn, Co-Founder and COO at Precium. 

“The end product of the rebrand is an identity that truly represents us. After a long process, many nights of deliberation, and testing with local and global clients, we are thrilled to re-introduce ourselves as the first African payments platform purpose built for enterprise.”