Important information regarding the discontinuation of EFT payments to Common Monetary Areas
12 December 2023
The Common Monetary Area (CMA) regulators recently decided to discontinue processing electronic funds transfer (EFT) payments and collections within the CMA from April 2024. The Payments Association of South Africa has been tasked with coordinating South African participants’ efforts to meet this deadline. The CMA consists of South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini.
Decommissioning of EFTs
The Bank of Namibia has indicated its intention to decommission EFTs and the CMA Cross-border Payments Oversight Committee (CPOC) has decided to end the interim EFT solution for CMA countries.
This withdrawal will impact Nedbank clients in the following ways:
- You will no longer be able to initiate CMA EFT payments or collections to Namibia, Lesotho or Eswatini on NetBank Business.
- If you have accounts in one of the CMA countries you will no longer be able to receive EFT payments initiated from outside that country’s border, unless it is initiated using a global banking channel.
However, the withdrawal will not impact the following payment processes in the CMA:
- In-country domestic interbank payment processing. For example, Nedbank Namibia will continue to process EFT payments to and from FNB and Standard Bank Namibia.
- Cross-border or high-value payments within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the SWIFT environment.
If you wish to continue making payments or collections to beneficiaries in one of the CMA countries, you can use our global payment platform NedTreasury or Global transactions on the Nedbank Business Hub, as Swift transactions will be allowed.
The processing of CMA EFT payments will be discontinued according to the following time frames:
- Monday, 15 April 2024 – The final day of processing domestic EFT credit payments and EFT debit collections to and from Namibia.
- Monday, 9 September 2024 – The final day of processing domestic EFT credit payments and EFT debit collections to and from Lesotho and Eswatini.
