Ozow’s partnership with First National Bank (FNB) and Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) signals a new phase in South Africa’s digital payments evolution, with API-driven technology replacing traditional EFT processes with faster, more secure transactions.
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The new payment solution enables merchants to connect directly with banking infrastructure, improving reliability, control and real-time payment authorisation.
The launch reflects a broader shift in South Africa’s payments landscape, where banks and fintechs are increasingly collaborating to modernise legacy payment systems through direct API integrations, improving both performance and trust in digital transactions.
For Ozow, FNB represents one of its largest transacting bank partners by volume, underscoring the scale and strategic importance of the integration.
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The partnership also reflects a growing trend across South Africa’s payments ecosystem, where collaboration between banks, fintechs and infrastructure providers is enabling more standardised, secure and scalable digital payment solutions.
Real-time payment innovation
Rachel Cowan, interim chief executive officer of Ozow, says the partnership builds on the company’s role in enabling more integrated, interoperable payment solutions.
“Account-to-account payments have always been central to Ozow’s model, and partnerships like this are critical in advancing a more connected payments ecosystem. By working closely with FNB and RMB, we can deliver a solution that improves payment performance, enhances security, and simplifies how merchants manage transactions at scale,” says Cowan.
Unlike traditional Pay by Bank methods, which often rely on manual processes or screen scraping, the payment API is built on direct bank API integrations.
At checkout, customers select the FNB/RMB payment option and enter their bank account number. A secure payment request is sent via Ozow to FNB or RMB, prompting the customer to authenticate the transaction within the FNB or RMB App using familiar security methods such as PIN or biometrics.
Once authorised, the transaction is processed in real time, with funds credited and the payment outcome confirmed instantly.
For FNB/RMB clients, this model removes the need for credential sharing, eliminates manual EFT steps, and reduces the common points of failure associated with traditional payment flows. This means a more secure, seamless and faster cashflow benefit, through real-time settlement.
Improving merchant outcomes
For merchants, the payment API for FNB and RMB addresses several long-standing challenges in EFT-based payments.
The solution introduces:
- Higher completion rates through real-time, in-app customer authorisation
- Improved operational efficiency with automated processing and reduced manual reconciliation
- Predictable cash flow via real-time settlement
- Enhanced security and fraud mitigation enabled by bank-grade authentication and OAuth-secured access
- Payments are settled through a single, aggregated payout, simplifying reconciliation and reducing administrative complexity for businesses.
Importantly, merchants can enable the payment API for FNB and RMB without any additional integration, as it is embedded within their existing Ozow implementation.
The solution also enables access to more than 10 million FNB and RMB customers, connecting merchants to one of South Africa’s largest and most digitally active banking bases. As one of the country’s leading retail banks, FNB has consistently driven digital adoption at scale, with strong uptake across its digital channels and a significant share of online banking activity.
Building payment ecosystems
Bradley Shodries, head of payments and strategic solutions for Commercial and Corporate Transactional Banking at FNB and RMB, says the launch reflects the bank’s broader strategy to enable secure, API-driven payments through collaboration.
“The launch of the payment API for FNB and RMB reflects our continued focus on enabling secure, API-driven payment solutions that simplify how customers and businesses transact.
"By partnering with Ozow, we are extending our banking infrastructure into the broader digital commerce ecosystem, allowing merchants to offer a more seamless and trusted account-to-account payment experience.”
Ozow’s rollout of the payment API for FNB and RMB builds on a number of notable partnerships across its ecosystem, enabling solutions such as PayShap Request, Crypto Payments and Business Lending, and reinforcing its position as a platform driving innovation across multiple payment rails.
As digital payments continue to grow in South Africa, the move towards API-based, bank-authenticated transactions represents a shift away from fragmented, trust-based EFT processes.
By combining Ozow’s payment orchestration capabilities with FNB and RMB’s banking infrastructure, the payment API introduces a more secure, efficient and scalable model for account-to-account payments, aligned with the broader direction of payments modernisation in South Africa.
