Closed-loop payments · South Africa
Payments, airtime, electricity, stock orders and credit on a single screen — and when the person paying and the shop being paid are both on WynkPay, the money moves between two accounts inside our own ledger. No card scheme. No interchange. Settled before the customer has put their phone away.
The closed loop
Most payment fees are not our fee. They are interchange — the toll a card scheme charges to move money between two banks. When the person paying and the shop being paid are both WynkPay accounts, there is no interbank leg to pay for. The transaction settles inside our ledger in under a second, and the fee you pay collapses.
One EMVCo QR code on the counter. It works from the WynkPay app and from any South African bank app, so nobody is turned away.
The moment the code is scanned, WynkPay asks whether the payer and the shop are both on the platform. The check completes before the customer's PIN screen appears.
If both sides are ours, the ledger moves the money directly — sub-second, no interchange, no scheme fee, funds visible in your balance immediately.
If the customer banks elsewhere, the same scan falls back to PayShap open-loop automatically. The customer never sees the difference; you just pay the open-loop rate.
Where a card fee goes
Most of what a South African merchant pays to accept a card is not the acquirer's margin — it is interchange, the toll the scheme charges to move money between two banks. When the person paying and the shop being paid are both WynkPay accounts, that leg does not exist: the payment is a double-entry posting inside one database transaction, and there is no bank to pay for crossing between. This is the platform's own discount rate, per rail, applied to the sale you choose.
Computed by @wynkpay/types — Money · MDR_BY_RAIL from the API accept service
2.75%
The scheme's interchange and the acquirer's cost, withheld before the merchant is credited.
0.00%
Both parties are WynkPay accounts. There is no interbank leg, so there is no interchange to withhold.
This is the interchange leg only, not your bill. WynkPay's own published acceptance fee on this sale is R0.75 (0.75%, capped at R7.50 — see the fee schedule). What the closed loop removes is the scheme's cut, not ours.
Rounding is half-up on the absolute value, in integer cents, which is what makes a fee and its refund exact mirrors.
How it fits together
A spaza owner does not buy a payments product. They run a shop, and the day makes demands in an order nobody chooses. This is that order — a Thursday in a shop turning over about R4 000 a day — with the WynkPay capability behind each moment named, so it can be checked rather than admired.
05:40
The Comms Box has been on battery since 03:00, when the grid went. It failed over from the congested MTN cell to Vodacom at some point in the night and reported both events to us. Nobody had to notice: the till network was up when the first customer arrived, and the terminal had already pulled its overnight configuration.
07:15
A regular buys bread and airtime money. She scans the code taped to the counter and types R38.50. Both accounts are WynkPay, so the platform takes the closed-loop path: one double-entry posting, sub-second, the merchant's balance visibly up before she has put her phone away. No interchange leg exists on that payment, because there is no second bank in it.
09:02
The next customer banks elsewhere. The same counter QR resolves in his bank's app, because everything WynkPay-specific lives in an EMVCo merchant account template other schemes are required to ignore. The payment leaves as PayShap instead, and the merchant pays the open-loop rate. He never learns that two different rails just ran; neither did she.
Personal loans
R1 000 to R50 000, over three to thirty-six months, paid into your WynkPay wallet. Put in what you need and what you earn and the app returns the complete quotation — every fee, the annual cost rate, and each instalment with its date — before there is anything to accept. WynkPay is a registered credit provider, NCRCP17266, and every loan is assessed for affordability before it is offered.
Two sides, one ledger
Accept every way people want to pay, add margin you were not earning before, and stop guessing where the day went.
A wallet that works at the corner shop, not only in the mall — and that does not punish you for being paid in cash.
Value-added services
Every VAS sale is margin on a product you did not have to buy, stock or carry. WynkPay routes each sale across Flash, Kazang and Prepaid24 and picks the cheapest live route, so you earn the spread instead of the aggregator. When the line drops, the top twenty products keep selling from an on-device voucher cache.
Vodacom, MTN, Cell C and Telkom prepaid, any denomination.
Bundles across all four networks, including daily and night bundles.
Eskom and municipal prepaid tokens, printed or sent by SMS.
Municipal prepaid water where the metro supports it.
DStv Easy View upwards, Showmax and Netflix vouchers.
Funeral cover and device insurance micro-premiums.
eNaTIS payments, Gautrain top-up, taxi association VAS.
Roblox, Steam and WhatsApp Business vouchers.
Commission rates for every category are published in full on the fee schedule.
Wholesale Hub
The Wholesale Hub puts supplier catalogues inside the app you already use to take payments. Build a basket, pay from your settlement balance or apply for stock on credit, and track the courier to your door. Because we can see your takings, a credit limit does not need a bank statement, a lease or a guarantor.
Merchant cash advance
You do not fill in an application. If your acceptance volume qualifies, an offer appears in the app with one number on it: the total you repay. Accept it and the money lands in your wallet the same day. Repayment is a fixed percentage of each day's settlement — quiet week, smaller instalment. No interest that compounds, no penalty for early settlement, no debit order that bounces.
Hardware, if you want it
QR costs you nothing but a printed code, and tap-to-phone turns any NFC Android handset into a card machine. When the queue justifies it, add a Sunmi terminal that prints, scans and takes cards — and a Comms Box so load-shedding and a congested tower do not close your till.
Compare the hardwareGet started
We start with your cellphone number and an OTP. FICA verification, banking details and your first QR code follow inside the app — most shops are accepting payments the same day.
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