Ozow lets a customer pay straight from their bank account, without a card. They choose their bank, log in, pick an account and approve the payment in their banking app, and the money moves from their account to yours.
What follows comes from Ozow’s own pages and developer documentation, read on 19 October 2026.
How does an Ozow payment work for the customer?
- At checkout they choose Ozow.
- They pick their bank. Ozow covers nine: Capitec, FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, TymeBank, Investec, Bidvest Bank and African Bank.
- They log in to their bank and choose the account to pay from.
- They approve the payment through their bank’s two-factor request, usually a prompt in the banking app.
There is no card to type in and nothing to store, which suits customers who would rather not put card details into a website they found an hour ago.
Which payment methods does Ozow cover?
Pay By Bank is the core of it, and Ozow also offers Capitec Pay, PayShap Request, Absa Pay and Nedbank Direct EFT, along with local and international card payments. Ozow publishes its own price list on its site, so you can see what each method costs before you sign.
What else can Ozow do?
PayShap Request sends the customer a payment request they can pay using just their phone number or bank account number, which works well for invoices and deposits.
Payouts go from your Ozow account to a bank account in real time, on weekdays from 00:01 to 18:00 and on Saturdays from 00:01 to 13:30. Ozow caps the size of a single payout, with a lower cap at weekends. Refunds also go back in real time.
Can you offer Ozow through another gateway?
Yes. Paystack’s Instant EFT runs on Ozow, so a store on Paystack already offers it. The trade-offs between the two gateways are in Paystack or Payfast.
How do you add Ozow to your website?
For a standard store, use a plugin. Ozow’s developer hub lists WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento plugins, among others.
For a custom system, build on Ozow’s One API, which Ozow now recommends for all new integrations. The older Payments API is marked as deprecated. One API sends its webhooks through Svix, with svix-id, svix-timestamp and svix-signature headers, and your server should verify that signature before it trusts any event.
If you maintain an older Payments API integration, its notifications carry a SHA512 hash, built from the response fields in a set order plus your private key. Recompute it, with the amount at two decimals, and compare the two before you act on the notification.
The rule is the same as for any gateway. Mark an order as paid only when Ozow’s notification arrives and checks out, never because the customer was sent back to your thank-you page.
When does the money settle?
Ozow’s pricing page says settlement is next-day. Its FAQ describes same-day settlement or standard interbank EFT timing. The two do not quite agree, so confirm the timing in your own agreement.
Ozow can sit beside a card gateway or handle bank payments on its own. If you want it wired into your store, booking system or accounting, tell me what you are running.
Sources
- Ozow, Payment methods, How to pay and FAQ
- Ozow, PayShap Request and Payouts
- Ozow, Developer hub
- Paystack, Pay with bank
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