And perhaps that explains the lack of adoption.

Absolutely.

I think, you know, I often call it four P's, right? The things that's holding us back from getting to, let's say, large scale pay shop adoption, as we see in Brazil with PICS, right? The first one in my mind is a very important one.

that we're tackling as the central bank, Bongani with the banks, we call it the parity issues.

So if I'm sending you money, Bongani, I shouldn't be second guessing as to what the limit is.

I should know the limit is whatever the limit is, 5,000 grand, et cetera.

Secondly, I shouldn't have different user experiences, right? The ability for me to use an app easily.

Most South Africans still rely on cold, hard cash.

It was 6,144, representing an average value of of 10.7 billion rand.

So what they tell us, Dudu, is that, you know, the important bit is what are these transactions for, right? And when you think about the static RTGS, I'm just going to go back to my thought of it being the core infrastructure.

So these are banks in the static region that connect to the core infrastructure.

And the bottom line is that these transactions, you know, could be for capital market transactions, money market transactions, You know, they could equally be, you know, transactions between banks.

And often there are customer transactions, people who want to move funds, you know, customer to customer payments via their banks, right, or their payment service providers.

But these are those transactions.

Now, what I must say, when you're looking at the numbers, you'll see that the SADC RTGS has been a core infrastructure from about 2013.

So all these different financial instruments that are emerging or technological financial instruments, how should we understand them or how are you understanding them in cross-border payments on the continent? Is it a bit too early? Are we thinking about how we're going to sort of work around them if we're not already?

is

the kind of currency that those countries will go with.

But for the remaining countries, certainly the idea from the Committee of Central Bank Governors of the 15 countries is is to onboard these currencies over time.

And I'll make it even more practical and say, you can think that we now have amongst the 15 countries, eight countries that have volunteered to interconnect their faster payment systems.

So for those eight countries, CMA, can you still hear me? Yes, please, yes, please, we can.

For the CMA, plus the other four countries, you will see that potentially by next year, we will push to onboard, you know, those particular currencies.

So the short answer is yes.

Just out of curiosity, I How many transactions in a month are we seeing being processed?

So what's the competitive advantage, I guess, of this system? Why is it so important?

Yes, I think it's important and I'm going to bring it closer to onboarding the Angolan Kwanzaa.

So you can imagine a trader selling goods and services in Angola And today, in order for them to get settled, they'll either invoice in a different currency, whether that's dollar or rand, etc.

Tomorrow, what they could do is invoice in Kwanzaa.

And as long as they've got a counterparty in Namibia that says, yes, sure, I'm willing to pay you, click, and it happens.

There's no need for a third currency.

And that's how we oil trade and transactions today.

is

I think people would really love to hear about that.

Of course, of course, Junaid.

And thank you for having me.

It's such a privilege, such a pleasure.

This is going to surprise you.

I started right at what one would call the bottom rung, loading cash in ATMs and fixing point-of-sale machines back in, I think it was 2000, early 2000.

Wow.

And then for folks that are not super familiar with the role and the position that you're in, could you maybe just give an overview of what all you're responsible for and what your scope is?