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Lesetja Kganyago

Governor, South African Reserve Bank

Search every verified Lesetja Kganyago interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Lesetja Kganyago, Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, delivered the opening keynote at the 2026 Payments Conference in October, where he discussed ongoing reforms to the national payment system. He noted that non-banks will be able to participate directly in the payment system, that payment system management functions have transitioned to the Reserve Bank, and that the introduction of the QR Plus standard aims to improve interoperability. He reported that the PayShap real-time payment service has surpassed 1 billion transactions since its 2023 inception, with over 1 trillion rand transferred, while acknowledging that PayShap still processes a small share of transactions compared to cash and other electronic transfers. He emphasized the need for consistent customer experiences across banks and described payments as essential economic infrastructure. In September, Kganyago announced the Monetary Policy Committee's unanimous decision to raise the repo rate by 25 basis points to 7.25%, citing geopolitical conflicts, oil price shocks, and global supply disruptions as sources of inflationary pressure. He warned that inflation could rise above 5% in the fourth quarter and stated that the Reserve Bank adopted a more restrictive stance to prevent second-round effects, saying the central bank cannot wait for such effects to materialize before acting. He also noted that South Africa's stronger starting position, including a lower inflation target and positive real interest rates, allowed for a measured response compared to past shocks. The Reserve Bank lowered its growth outlook, projecting annual growth of 1.2% for the year, and Kganyago indicated that future rate decisions would be made meeting by meeting based on incoming data.

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Notable quotes

“The fact is PayP is far from being ubiquitous both for sending money between friends and families and for buying goods and services. Four main issues are holding us back. The first is parity. Customers still encounter different transaction limits, functionality and user experiences across participating banks. A nationally instant payment service cannot feel like a different product depending on where a customer banks”

“Payments are essential economic infrastructure. When they work properly, hardly anyone notices, but when they perform poorly, everyone is affected. High payment costs or unreliable payment systems slow up an economy just as much as failures in other network sectors like electricity, rail, and ports. And just like in those sectors, we are enthusiastic about reforms to improve functioning and lower cost in payments.”

“It is a -- and which then means for where we are, it is consistent with our inflation targeting objective. Environments -- will continue to assess the situation. We will take our positions meeting by meeting based on the outlook and incoming data. The shock multipronged. It was not just oil. It is fertilizer. Diesel margins. The grain stock. The usual playbook of taking one shock and then let us look through the shoc”

“If you wait until they are here in the room, you are too late. It's outside of your policy horizon. Is almost nothing that you could do about it. But you mentioned we talked about services inflation rising and we have repeatedly meeting after meeting talked about services inflation. We did some diffusion and we tried to drill a little bit deeper so that we can get an understanding and so we took Statistics South Afri”

“We watch the other central banks. We do not necessarily follow them. And particularly important are the G3 central banks that we had mentioned. And they become important because their actions could either tighten or loosen global financing conditions. And when global financing conditions are tighter, there tends to be an outflow from emerging markets into the advanced economies if they are the ones tightening. And so”

“We were able to take this baby steps with 25 basis points precisely because we have eaten our vegetables. We had taken the inflation target lower. We were on target. We had positive real interest rates, and that gave us the breathing room that we do not have to respond as aggressively as we had responded in the past. But rest assured, we will get inflation back to target.”

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