REPORT BACK
SADC’s new payment
plan: a simple step to
success
Reporting on the ongoing rollout of the Southern African Development
Community’s (SADC) revolutionary new payment system that is set to boost
economies and trade in the region.
T
he initial phase of SADC’s move to streamline crossborder transactions between its members has seen
settlements involving Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia
and South Africa top R10 billion a week since its
inception in July 2013.
Cross-border payments are currently overloaded by the
administrative processes of currency conversions, foreign exchange
regulations and the transferring of funds between countries and
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banks. Facilitating transactions through a single currency and
central settlement hub is seen as a key strategic initiative towards
realising the full economic potential of the $780 billion SADC region.
Under existing arrangements, a transaction can take days to
be settled. With the new SADC Integrated Regional Electronic
Settlement System (Siress), transactions will be settled in seconds.
Siress, part of the regional integration project’s Payments Integration
Project, also aims to boost socio-economic development through
Edition 8
2013/12/19 4:13 PM