Payment gateway fees look small on paper. A percentage and a few rand per transaction. Then you do R200,000 a month and realise that 0.5% gap between two gateways is R12,000 a year — straight off your profit.

There are two problems with most comparisons you’ll find online. The first is they quote outdated rates. The second is they compare headline percentages without including the fees that actually move the number — payout fees, settlement timing, Shopify’s third-party transaction fee, VAT. This post fixes both.

We’ve integrated PayFast, Yoco, Peach Payments, Ozow, Stitch and PayGate on hundreds of South African stores. Every rate quoted below comes from the provider’s own official pricing page, current as of May 2026. We’ve also run the maths on a real store scenario so you can see what your actual monthly cost would be. If you want to skip the reading and just plug in your own numbers, our Payment Gateway Comparator does the same calculation interactively.

Six gateways at a glance

Here’s how the major South African gateways compare on their headline rates as of May 2026. All percentages are ex VAT.

A few things stand out immediately. Yoco and Stitch Express both publish cards at 2.95% — lower than PayFast and identical to Peach on the card line. Ozow and Peach beat everyone on bank-direct EFT. PayGate doesn’t publish a clean public fee table any more — it’s now part of DPO Group and rates are negotiated case by case. We’ll come back to all of these.

1. PayFast — the all-rounder default

Cards: 3.2% + R2 ex VAT. Instant EFT: 2.0% min R2 ex VAT. No monthly fee. T+1 settlement.

PayFast (now branded “Payfast by Network” after being acquired by Network International) is still the most-used gateway in South Africa. It’s been around since 2007, supports 18+ payment methods in one integration, and just works out of the box on every major ecommerce platform.

A note on the rate: many older blog posts still quote PayFast at 3.5% for cards. The current rate on their official fees page is 3.2% + R2.00. If you’re paying 3.5%, you’re either on legacy pricing or being quoted incorrectly — check your invoice.

Strengths: Widest payment-method coverage in SA — cards, Instant EFT, Capitec Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, SnapScan, Scan to Pay, Zapper, Mobicred, MoreTyme, Mukuru, RCS Store Cards. Native plugins for 70+ platforms. No setup fee, no monthly fee, no minimum volume. Customers trust the PayFast brand at checkout, which helps conversion.

Weaknesses: Cards still cost 0.25–0.65% more than Peach or Yoco at lower volumes. Payout fee of R8.70 ex VAT per payout adds up if you withdraw frequently. Refunds are R2 ex VAT each. Volume discounts only kick in above R50,000/month average over three months — you have to ask.

Best for: Almost any new SA store under R200k/month. The default choice unless you have a specific reason to pick something else.

2. Yoco — tiered rates that genuinely reward growth

Cards: 2.55–2.95% ex VAT (tiered by volume). International/Amex: 3.20–3.40%. EFT: 2.0%. No monthly fee. T+2 settlement.

Yoco started life as a card machine business but its online gateway has quietly become one of the cheapest options on the market. The tiered rate is the headline: the more you transact, the less you pay, with no negotiation required. Most stores start at 2.95% and step down automatically as monthly volume grows.

Strengths: Lowest published headline card rate in SA at the volume-tier prices. Clean, transparent pricing — no per-transaction add-on fee, no payout fee. Solid Shopify and WooCommerce plugins. Excellent if you also sell in person (one account, one dashboard, online + card-machine sales blended).

Weaknesses: Smaller range of payment methods than PayFast — no Mobicred, no MoreTyme, no Zapper, no SnapScan, no BNPL natively. Yoco EFT exists but coverage is narrower than Ozow or Peach Pay by Bank. T+2 settlement is a day slower than competitors. If you sell anything customers usually buy on credit (furniture, electronics, gym equipment), the lack of BNPL is a real gap.

Best for: Card-heavy stores where you don’t need BNPL or instant EFT. Stores already using Yoco for in-person sales. Service businesses with smaller transaction counts but higher AOV.

3. Peach Payments — the lowest “Pay by Bank” rate

Cards: 2.95% + R1.50 ex VAT (Growth plan). Pay by Bank / Capitec Pay / Nedbank Direct EFT: 1.50% + R1.50. No monthly fee on Growth plan.

Peach Payments is the gateway behind many of South Africa’s enterprise brands and increasingly the choice for SMEs that have outgrown PayFast. The published Growth plan is straightforward: 2.95% + R1.50 on cards, and a remarkable 1.50% + R1.50 on bank-direct EFT methods. That’s the cheapest EFT rate of any major gateway, matched only by Ozow.

Enterprise plan kicks in above R500,000/month — R300/month account fee but custom volume-based rates plus the option to bring your own merchant account, which dramatically reduces card fees if you’re processing real volume.

Strengths: Excellent for stores where bank-direct EFT is a meaningful share of payments. Free next-business-day settlement. Mobile-first checkout that genuinely converts well. 365-day phone and email support. Strong recurring billing and tokenisation. Works seamlessly with Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and most other platforms.

Weaknesses: Per-transaction R1.50 fee hits micro-transactions hard. Tokenisation (storing customer cards for one-click checkout) is R200/month extra. Onboarding takes longer than PayFast — expect a week of FICA back-and-forth.

Best for: Stores processing R100k+/month. Subscription businesses. Anyone wanting bank-direct EFT as a primary payment method. Stores ready to grow into Enterprise pricing.

4. Ozow — instant EFT specialist, now offers cards too

Cards: 2.85% tiered down to 2.65% ex VAT. Pay by Bank / Capitec / PayShap: 1.5% (min R1). No monthly fee.

Ozow built its name on instant EFT and dominates that category in SA. The product has expanded — you can now offer card payments through Ozow too, at competitive tiered rates (2.85% under R250k/month, dropping to 2.65% above R500k/month). They’ve also added Capitec Pay, Nedbank Direct EFT, Absa Pay, PayShap Request and crypto.

The 1.5% rate on bank-direct methods is exceptional. If a meaningful share of your customers are happy paying via their bank app instead of card, Ozow saves you about 1.7% on every transaction compared to a card-only setup.

Strengths: Cheapest published EFT rate in SA (tied with Peach). EFT transactions can’t be charged back the way card payments can — useful for fraud-prone product categories. Next-day settlement. No setup, no subscription, no minimums. Refunds and payouts are R3 each.

Weaknesses: EFT conversion is generally lower than card checkout unless your audience is genuinely EFT-comfortable. Voucher-redemption rates (4.5–6%) are punishing if you accept those. The tiered card discount only kicks in at R250k+/month. Enterprise package needs R1.5M+/month — a big jump.

Best for: B2B stores. High-AOV consumer stores. Stores where checkout currently abandons because customers don’t have card details on hand. Almost always best deployed alongside a card gateway, not instead of one.

5. Stitch Express — enterprise infrastructure at SME pricing

Cards: 2.95% ex VAT. International cards: 3.4%. Capitec Pay: 2.0%. BNPL: 5.7%. Standard payouts R2, instant payouts R10. No monthly fee. Custom pricing above R200k/month.

Stitch is the gateway behind some of South Africa’s largest enterprises — TFG, Vodacom, Takealot, MTN. The interesting twist is Stitch Express, their self-serve product, which gives smaller SA stores access to the same infrastructure at competitive published rates: 2.95% on cards (matching Peach and Yoco at the headline), 2% on Capitec Pay, and zero per-transaction add-on fee.

They’re PCI DSS Level 1 and ISO 27001 certified, with direct connections to multiple banks rather than going through a single aggregator. That means dynamic 3DS, smart routing, and built-in failover when a bank has issues — meaningful reliability advantages over aggregator-only gateways. Stitch’s pitch on the enterprise side is 10%+ higher conversion on switch, which at R10m/month is worth far more than a 0.3% rate saving anyway.

Strengths: Best-in-class technical infrastructure. Multiple banking rails with intelligent failover. Strong fraud tools (Stitch Shield). 24/7 support with real humans. Shopify and WooCommerce plugins for Express. Custom pricing kicks in above R200k/month — earlier than most competitors.

Weaknesses: Instant payouts at R10 are pricier than competitors if you withdraw frequently. Smaller range of published payment methods than PayFast (no Mobicred, no MoreTyme, no SnapScan natively). Brand recognition with shoppers is lower than PayFast — though this is changing fast.

Best for: Stores doing R100k+/month that care about transaction success rates and reliability, not just headline fees. Subscription businesses. Stores where checkout conversion is a measurable lever for revenue. Anyone planning to scale into Stitch’s enterprise infrastructure without switching providers.

6. PayGate (DPO) — the veteran, now part of the PayFast family

Pricing: Negotiated. Now part of DPO Group (and Network International, same group as PayFast).

PayGate is one of South Africa’s oldest payment gateways and has been the reliable enterprise choice for decades. The company was acquired by DPO Group, which itself is now part of Network International — the same group that acquired PayFast. From a technology standpoint, PayGate and PayFast increasingly share infrastructure. PayGate keeps its own brand for merchants who need a traditional gateway with their own internet merchant account.

There’s no clean public fees page any more — rates are quoted per merchant and depend on volume, industry risk, and whether you bring your own merchant account. Typical card rates we see on PayGate quotes range from 2.95% to 3.5% depending on volume.

Strengths: Established, reliable, used by many large SA brands. Strong for merchants with their own bank merchant accounts. Solid Shopify plugin. Reasonable customer support.

Weaknesses: Less aggressive on price than newer competitors. Feels dated next to Peach, Yoco or Stitch in checkout design. With the PayFast acquisition, the strategic future of PayGate as a distinct product is unclear.

Best for: Established brands already on PayGate (don’t break what works). Merchants with their own internet merchant account who want a stable veteran processor.

The actual maths: a real store, all six gateways

Let’s run the numbers on a real scenario. A South African store doing R200,000/month in revenue, average order value R600, 333 transactions. We’re assuming a 70/30 split between card and EFT payments where the gateway supports both — a realistic mix for SA ecommerce.

On this scenario, Ozow comes out cheapest at R4,890/month, followed by Yoco at R5,330, Stitch Express at R5,374 and Peach at R5,530. PayFast is the most expensive of the published-rate options at R6,346 — about R1,500/month more than Ozow.

But raw fees aren’t the whole story. The split stack — PayFast for cards plus Ozow for EFT — costs R5,846/month, which is more than Ozow alone. So why would anyone run it? Because card conversion is typically 5–15% higher than EFT-only conversion. If your card abandonment improves by even 5%, you’ve made back the extra R956/month and then some. We model this properly in our Payment Gateway Comparator — it lets you toggle the conversion impact.

Annualised, picking the wrong gateway here costs R17,472 — which is essentially what a part-time virtual assistant costs. The decision matters.

Hidden costs nobody mentions

The headline rate is what gets quoted, but it’s not what you’ll actually pay. Here are the line items that move the real number.

Our actual recommendation by store size

After integrating these gateways across hundreds of South African stores, here’s what we recommend in practice — not the theoretical cheapest, but what actually makes sense.

• Under R50k/month: Just PayFast. The rate difference vs. competitors works out to maybe R200/month — not worth the complexity of running two gateways or learning a new dashboard. Spend the time on conversion instead.
• R50k–R200k/month: PayFast or Yoco for cards, Ozow for EFT. The dual-gateway setup typically costs slightly more in raw fees than a single cheaper option but converts noticeably better — most stores end up ahead.
• R200k–R500k/month: Migrate to Peach Payments for cards and EFT in one stack, or stay with PayFast cards + Ozow EFT if it’s already working. Peach’s bank-direct EFT at 1.5% is the cheapest you’ll find at this scale on published rates.
• R200k+/month and care about reliability: Consider Stitch Express. At 2.95% cards and 2% Capitec Pay with no per-transaction fee, it’s competitive with Peach and Yoco — but the direct bank connections and built-in failover are a real edge if downtime costs you money.
• R500k+/month: Negotiate. Talk to Peach Payments about their Enterprise plan. Talk to Stitch about custom pricing (they’re explicit about it on their fees page). At this volume custom rates absolutely beat published ones — every gateway will move on price.
• International sales: Stitch or Peach (both handle international cards well), or run Stripe alongside your SA gateway for non-SA customers.

What people get wrong

• Picking the cheapest gateway and losing conversion. A 0.5% saving on fees is worthless if you lose 5% of customers at checkout because they can’t pay how they want to. Card buyers don’t convert on EFT-only checkouts. EFT buyers don’t always have a card. Offer both.
• Quoting outdated rates. PayFast’s card rate is 3.2% + R2 as of 2026, not 3.5%. Always check the provider’s own fees page before deciding — and recheck annually, because rates do change.
• Forgetting Shopify’s third-party fee. If you’re on Shopify Basic in SA, you pay 2.0% to Shopify on top of whatever your gateway charges. That changes the maths completely — on a R200k store that’s R4,000/month going to Shopify just because Shopify Payments isn’t available locally.
• Not negotiating at volume. Above R250k–R500k/month every major gateway will quote you better than published rates. You have to ask. PayFast publicly says they negotiate above R50k/month average over three months — they don’t volunteer it.
• Ignoring chargeback risk. If you sell expensive electronics, cosmetics, or anything fraud-prone, the chargeback rate on cards is a real cost. EFT transactions (Ozow, Peach Pay by Bank) generally can’t be reversed the same way. For high-risk categories the savings on fraud outweigh the slightly lower EFT conversion.

Frequently asked questions

The honest bottom line

“Cheapest” depends entirely on what you sell, how much you sell, and how your customers want to pay. For most SA stores under R200k/month, the rate difference between the major gateways works out to a few hundred rand a month — not enough to lose sleep over. Your time is better spent on conversion, AOV, and repeat purchase rate, all of which move your bottom line far more than 0.3% on fees.

Above R200k/month, the maths starts to matter. At R500k/month, switching from a 3.2% gateway to a 2.65% gateway saves you R32,400 a year. At that point, the migration cost is paid back in two months and everything after that is straight profit.

If you want a quick read on which combination works for your specific store, try our Payment Gateway Comparator. It runs the same calculations above with your actual numbers and outputs a recommendation in about 30 seconds. For the quick version of this comparison without all the maths, see our earlier post PayFast vs Ozow vs Peach vs PayGate. And if you want help configuring whichever stack you choose properly — and avoiding the conversion problems most merchants don’t realise their gateway is causing — we do that.