Nuvei has received authorisation from the Payments Association of South Africa (PASA) to offer local merchant payment services in the country. The move extends its local acquiring network, which it offers through a single platform. The company cites research putting South Africa's e-commerce market at $8.48 billion in 2025. International businesses will be able to use the same Nuvei integration they already have in other markets.

What it means: Local acquiring, meaning a payment is processed by a provider licensed in the customer's own country, often makes a big difference to approval rates. When a transaction looks cross-border, issuing banks decline it more often and fees are higher. That is why large payment providers keep collecting local licences in more markets. Nuvei is one of the large acquirers in Europe, especially for e-commerce and digital services, so every extension of its network also concerns merchants selling from Greece into other countries. For Greek firms selling digital services or goods abroad, the lesson is that choosing a payment provider is not only about the price per transaction. Local presence in customers' countries can raise successful payments by a few percentage points, which translates into meaningful revenue. It is therefore worth reviewing approval data by country and asking providers for local processing where it exists. Africa remains a high-growth market but also carries particular fraud and currency risks, which must be assessed before any expansion. Finance teams should compare the extra revenue from higher approval rates against any added fees, since the net effect is what counts.

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