Payfast by Network is a proudly South African company supporting over 80,000 merchants. Under the leadership of Mpho Sadiki—who is passionate about building trust and putting the customer first—the business is innovating to transform the payments landscape.
Payfast by Network’s roots go back more than two decades. PayGate was founded in 1999, Payfast in 2007, and the two came together under the DPO Group in 2019. In 2021, they became part of Network International, creating one of the most trusted and established payment solutions providers in South Africa.
Over the years, Payfast by Network has grown to work with small merchants and enterprise clients, building a core value of trust to facilitate payments on their behalf.
Mpho Sadiki is the Managing Director for Merchant Services (Africa) at Network International, a digital payments leader founded over 30 years ago in the United Arab Emirates and now operating across more than 50 countries in the Middle East and Africa.
For Sadiki, the size and importance of Payfast by Network in 2025 cannot be understated, and he believes its growth under the guidance of parent company Network International has been phenomenal.
”The idea was to leverage the leading technology platforms of Network International and integrate the global and regional expertise to scale and grow, ultimately offering South African merchants a best-in-class payment service,” Sadiki, who holds an MBA from Wits Business School, explains.
The Payfast by Network difference
A good old mix of passion and care for the customer is vital for any venture to succeed. Yes, the bottom line is essential, but without a customer-centric attitude, any and all revenue will suffer.
This is precisely what Sadiki believes Payfast by Network does well. From coffee shops to street vendors, hair stylists and world-class start-ups, Payfast has played an integral role in helping businesses reach their goals, and this has been shown in its growth to date.
”I think our passion for our clients and our passion for service is what sets us apart. We could not do what we do if every employee within Payfast by Network and any of the service providers we use did not start the day by asking, ‘What can I do better today to ensure that my clients receive the best service?’”
”We have worked hard to create a business that cares for its customers and truly puts their needs at the heart of what we do. We are our customers’ first choice, and that’s the core of what we do,” Sadiki insists.
It also doesn’t hurt to have best-in-class products available for your clients, and innovation is non-negotiable within the corridors of Payfast by Network.
Sadiki bluntly admits that ”you cannot survive in this environment if you are not continuously innovating,” and he’s right. With the seemingly constant advances in areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), falling behind for even a day can have detrimental effects on a business like Payfast by Network.
”We continually innovate—whether through offering best-in-class POS devices, enabling digital wallet acceptance, enhanced finance solutions, customer engagement platforms, or our fully digital onboarding journey that allows sign-up in under five minutes. Innovation is in our DNA,” Sadiki explains.
”We want to innovate at pace and evolve at pace because the world we’re operating in is changing every hour, and we have to be one step ahead.”
While Payfast by Network may be on a high thanks to Sadiki and his team, it hasn’t always been straightforward, with challenges threatening to derail operations on several occasions.
One such early challenge was building enough trust with customers to scale—the trust they value so highly today.
”An initial challenge had to do with building brand loyalty and brand identification, but we have got there, largely thanks to our affinity with merchants and how we have remained relevant to the market. We are proudly South African, and the leading payment services provider in South Africa thanks to our ability to run a best-in-class technology stack and, ultimately, the most secure payment stack and products,” Sadiki insists.
Operating in a changing landscape
Armed with nearly two decades of experience within the financial services and payments industry, Sadiki is no stranger to how quickly things can change.
A good example is that just 10 years ago, e-commerce accounted for no more than 1% of total payments processed in South Africa. Today, 10% of total payment volumes are processed digitally. The emergence of marketplaces like Takealot and the rise of Checkers Sixty60 grocery delivery apps have added a level of convenience by introducing a different way of shopping—gamechangers, if you will.
With all this change happening, regulation is key. Thankfully, regulators are becoming increasingly involved in the regulation of payments, which goes a long way toward building belief within the sector—both internally and externally.
This digital transformation for merchants highlights how South Africa’s retail and payment landscape is shifting toward digital-first commerce. Payfast aims to create a payment ecosystem that blends local insight with global expertise, with the goal to empower merchants with flexibility, choice and confidence.
This speaks to the loyalty Payfast by Network has garnered over the years and will only serve to help them grow as more and more people start to understand and, you guessed it, the trust Payfast by Network has to offer.
”The introduction of regulated participation of payment service providers by the SARB will be a great enabler to building trust and fostering a culture of innovation. The financial service industry is all about trust, so when you have the right level of licensing and a strong alignment on where the industry needs to go, consumers will have faith in established and emerging innovative payment service providers,” he avers.
With the aforementioned change a constant within the world of Payfast by Network, payment safety becomes an even bigger priority.
The reality is that if you cannot provide a safe transactional environment, you will lose that hard-earned trust you have built with customers, so it goes without saying just how important safety is to the strategy and operations of Payfast by Network.
Sadiki used an interesting line when discussing safety, with ”staying one step ahead of the fraudsters” being rather apt. This is because, regardless of how hard you work to protect your systems, the fraudsters are inevitably doing the same.
”As soon as you unlock the next level of safety features, fraudsters will start working on it to break that chain. However, we constantly monitor transactions through big data and AI to determine where these transactions originate. If there are any indicators that this could be something untoward, we act,” Sadiki explains.
” We use advanced AI and real-time monitoring to detect fraud, ensuring merchants are always protected. Sadly, fraud is an industry of its own, but it is our responsibility to stay one step ahead of them.”
Seamless, secure, frictionless growth
South Africa’s retail and payment landscape is shifting toward digital-first commerce, and the momentum is undeniable. According to Sadiki, within the next decade, the digital payments economy in Africa will easily surpass $1.5 trillion as the continent’s population slowly moves away from using cash. In South African terms, 42% of all payments are digital, and that percentage is expected to grow in the same time frame.
This means there will be serious demand for payment services providers like Payfast by Network to manage transactions on a much bigger scale, which Sadiki is extremely excited about.
”There is clearly going to be an upside to capitalising on that growth, but what are the things that will drive this hyper growth? Digital adoption of payment wallets, Mobile Money, is a big thing outside South African borders. The emergence and adoption of real-time payments will also significantly drive digital payments in Africa,” Sadiki states.
”Cross-border real-time remittances are growing because we’ve got dominant economies in the south, east, north and west with many migrant diaspora labourers. They move into those dominant economies for better prospects for work, they generate the money, and they have to send it home. So, things like faster payments, faster real-time clearance and remittances will continue to grow and outpace cash, which we want to be part of from a growth perspective.”
From an industry perspective, Sadiki closed our chat by discussing the relationship between growth and removing friction from transactions.
Sadiki used a real-world example to explain how innovation will remove friction from the payment process, which will, in turn, provide merchants and customers with a much more seamless and secure experience.
”This industry will continue to grow and embed other verticals. Whether it is unattended payments, business-to-business payments or trade payments, we will continue to see those conversions onto single platforms. And that is the exciting prospect. It’s just key that we ensure that payments remain secure, frictionless and real-time. Our objective is that you should not even think about making a payment; you should do it, and it must be seamless. That is what we are doing, we’re continuously innovating to remove friction because there shouldn’t be friction.”
”Whether you’re buying from a street vendor, retailer or running a global e-commerce store, payments should be seamless, secure and instant. That’s the future we’re building,” Sadiki concludes.
And we look forward to seeing how that innovation changes the payment game in the future.
