Assumed Settlement

EFT follows the ‘assumed settlement’ concept. As soon as an EFT payment instruction is processed through BankservAfrica and delivered to the homing bank for processing, BankservAfrica assumes that the transaction outcome is successful. Therefore BankservAfrica will settle the transaction between the homing and originating banks’ SAMOS accounts at the end of the action day.

This means that there is no need for an ‘approval’, i.e., no response message is returned and no further action is required from any entity. This is fine if the transaction was successful. However, if the transaction is not successful – for example, if there are not enough funds in the homing bank customer account for a debit payment – then the homing bank will initiate an unpaid and send it to BankservAfrica. BankservAfrica will then send the unpaid to the originating bank. The unpaid reverses the effect of the original payment.