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Investec are beginning to hunt for clients outside their usual market. They are going to be doing this by focusing on businesses that do lots of small value transactions.

Investec Widen Their Target Market

Investec, who are one of South Africa’s top banks for high-net-worth fancy clients, is expanding its business banking services with a new payments system aimed at corporate clients who need to handle high volumes of low-value transactions.

In other words, clients who have lots of small transactions all the time.

PayShap

PayShap is a fairly new rapid payments platform which is designed to make transferring small amounts of money faster, simpler, and more accessible.

It is designed to try move people away from carrying cash or even needing a bank account.

Created by BankservAfrica, PayShap facilitates low-cost, real-time payments and is a collaborative effort supported by several South African banks, including major players like Standard Bank, Nedbank, and now Investec.

PayShap enables users to send and receive money instantly using just a cellphone number as an identifier, eliminating the need for a bank account number or even traditional banking hours.

By utilizing PayShap Investec is now positioning itself to serve businesses like retailers and mobile network operators who process large numbers of small transactions. This marks a strategic shift for Investec as it targets mid-sized to large businesses with an annual turnover of between R30 million and R1.5 billion.

Moving Downmarket Into A Broader Base To Find More Clients

Kuben Naidoo, Investec’s new head of corporate payments, explained that this move is part of the bank’s effort to tap into new income streams as South Africa’s economy remains sluggish.

SA’s GDP growth is very weak only averaging under 1% every year over the last decade. So if the fancy clients can’t come to you then you need to think about reaching out to less fancy clients who could still benefit from your services.  Investec has been thinking about this for some time and has been building its transactional banking platform for two years already.

The bank’s goal is to grow its share in the corporate payments market, where other major banks currently make around R30 billion annually. You can see that it is a big market segment and quite profitable. Even a modest increase in Investec’s market share could be significant for its earnings.

Payments Becoming More Digital

Investec’s new payments platform includes person-to-business and business-to-person payments and they hope to go live by 2026.

They are currently testing a “request-to-pay” feature with five corporate clients, which is expected to go live by February 2025.

The bank hopes to offer a more inclusive, real-time payment options over the months ahead, aligning with South African regulators’ push to reduce cash dependency and encourage financial inclusion—similar systems used in India’s and Brazil’s.