South African companies that issue rand stablecoins have welcomed a treasury plan to rewrite its cross-border crypto rules.
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana told parliament on Wednesday that the draft capital flow management regulations had drawn thousands of comments. The draft included the cross-border treatment of crypto assets. He said “we need to take a different approach to these amendments”.
In his medium-term budget policy statement, Godongwana said treasury would move away from pre-approvals. Instead, it would check transactions for legitimacy and tax compliance. He said this would be guided by the recommendations of the Financial Stability Board.
A revised second draft will follow. Godongwana gave no date and did not say which parts of the rules would change.
Simon Dingle, co-founder of the rand stablecoin Zarp, said the announcement was “a clear sign that treasury and the Reserve Bank listened to the thousands of submissions on the draft rules”.
“A fully reserve-backed rand stablecoin like Zarp is not capital leaving the country,” Dingle said. “Treating every stablecoin payment as a capital flow, when the same payment through a bank wouldn’t be, never made sense.”
Dingle also called for the ban on companies moving crypto across borders to be dropped. He said “business-to-business payments are where stablecoins add the most value”.
A draft crypto asset manual released in August would stop South African companies from moving crypto across the border in either direction. According to TechCentral, this put the young rand stablecoin market on course for a possible regulatory wall.
“Pre-approval regimes don’t stop capital from leaving in practice. They push activity offshore and into the shadows,” Dingle said.
Super Group’s ZAR Supercoin, known as ZARsc, also welcomed the change. Gideon Greaves, managing director of Supercoin, called the move to checking transactions for legitimacy and tax compliance “a positive step”.
“When two South Africans transact in ZARsc, the rand behind the coin stays in a South African bank account,” Greaves said. He hoped the link to the Financial Stability Board would mean “rules that recognise the difference between a domestic rand stablecoin and other crypto assets”.
Wiehann Olivier, a partner and global co-head of digital assets at Forvis Mazars, also backed the change. He said it recognised that “regulation should identify and address actual risk rather than prevent legitimate participation before it begins”.
Data published on Tuesday by crypto payments company MoneyBadger shows spending in rand stablecoins is growing. Monthly checkout value in Zaru rose from R484 207 in June to R1.28-million in September. Growth slowed to 10.6% between August and September.
Zaru is the rand stablecoin issued by BlockTower South Africa. So far in 2026, it has made up 7.7% of checkout spending on MoneyBadger’s network. Bitcoin led with 39.9%, followed by the dollar stablecoin USDT at 36.1%.
ZARsc recorded R4 408 in checkout spending in September. That was up 286.9% from a low base in August.
The growth came during a Luno Pay reward campaign that runs from 1 June to 31 January 2027. Luno customers get 15% back on purchases of R100 or more paid with Zaru. The reward is capped at R500 in any 30-day period and is paid in Tether Gold, a gold-backed token.
MoneyBadger has ties to Zaru’s backers. Its CEO and co-founder, Carel van Wyk, co-founded Luno. Luno and Sanlam are two of BlockTower’s three shareholders. MoneyBadger’s figures cover only checkout activity on its own network.
Zaru launched in February with backing from Luno, Sanlam, EasyEquities and Lesaka. A proof-of-reserves report by Moore put its circulation at 61.6 million tokens at 31 August. That was up from 58.4 million at the end of June.
Zarp launched in 2021, and its reserves are managed by Old Mutual Wealth. Its public dashboard showed R81.9-million in circulation on Thursday, backed by reserves of R93.3-million.
Source: this article is based on reporting by TechCentral. Image: TechCentral. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice Technology desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Werner Jacobs covers technology for Tzaneen Voice. Werner reports on mobile networks, data prices, internet access, smartphones, apps, AI, cybersecurity and South African tech companies. Each story explains what a new product, price change or policy means for ordinary users in South Africa.