PayShap Proxies
Overview
The PayShap scheme supports two means of identifying the beneficiary account for a payment:
- Pay-by-account
- Pay-by-proxy
Pay-by-account requires that the sender provides the beneficiary's account number and the receiving bank's identifier when initiating the payment.
Pay-by-proxy allows for the use of a proxy to identify the beneficiary's account. A proxy consists of two parts:
1. An easily-remembered personal identifier
PayShap supports mobile phone numbers as valid personal identifiers.
2. A domain that identifies where the store of value is held
This is an alpha-numeric string of up to 36 characters, which may be the full or shortened name of the PayShap participant, or a lower level of detail such as the name of an account or wallet product offered by the participant.
Constraints
To ensure that an account can be uniquely identified by a proxy, the PayShap scheme applies a number of key constraints and principles:
- Only a customer's mobile phone number (MSISDN) can be used as valid personal identifier.
- A customer may have multiple proxies linked to different accounts. Where the MSISDN is the same, the domain specifies the account linked to that proxy.
- One account can be linked to multiple proxies, but one proxy cannot be linked to more that one account of the same domain (i.e. the combination of MSISDN and domain must link to a unique account).
- At most one domain can be registered against a given personal identifier at the scheme operator. This is also referred to 'enlisting' a proxy. It means that when making a payment, a payer can provide a proxy without a domain (known as a 'domainless' proxy). When the scheme operator receives a payment instruction containing a domainless proxy, it will look up the domain it has registered to that proxy and route the message accordingly.
- Should a beneficiary wish to receive payment to an account other than that linked to the registered proxy-domain combination (or in the case that the account holder has not registered a proxy with the scheme) then they will need to supply the full proxy — including domain — for the account to the payer. The scheme operator will then simply route the transaction according to the supplied domain.
Example
A customer who has an MSISDN of +27-0831234567 and 3 different bank accounts could have the following proxies:
| Bank | Account Number | Domain | Registered With Scheme Operator | Proxy |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bigbank | 9043008721 | Bigbank_SmartSave | Yes | +27-0831234567@Bigbank_SmartSave |
| Bigbank | 9150086438 | Bigbank_BusCheque | No | +27-0831234567@Bigbank_BusCheque |
| Smallbank | 5600986302 | Smallbank | No | +27-0831234567@Smallbank |
If the customer wishes to be paid to account number 9043008721 at Bigbank, they only need to provide their MSISDN to the payer. Payment to either of the other accounts would require the full proxy.
Proxy Resolution and Enrichment
Inbound payments
When Electrum receives a proxy resolution request from the PayShap scheme, the proxy first needs to be resolved to its corresponding accountholder name. Electrum performs the resolution and returns this information to the payer bank via the scheme operator. The payer bank then presents this to the payer so that they can verify that the beneficiary name matches who they intend to pay.
After successful beneficiary verification, a credit transfer request is initiated. When Electrum receives this request, it needs to be enriched with the beneficiary account details corresponding to the given proxy. The request is then delivered to the receiving participant's banking system for processing.
Electrum can perform the proxy resolution and enrichment either internally by the account mirror service, or by making API calls to the participant's own account server.
Outbound payments
When a participant sends a proxy resolution request to the Electrum API, Electrum will communicate out to the scheme operator to request the required information from the beneficiary's bank. Electrum will then return the account holder name to the sending participant for verification.
Refer to the outbound payments implementation guide for more details.
Managing Proxies
Participants in the PayShap scheme are required to implement a system to manage the creation, registration, and maintenance of proxy identifiers and domains. Read about Electrum's account and proxy management solutions for details about the available options and their implementation requirements.