Namibia’s payments system has finally said the quiet part out loud. Merchants may not surcharge card payments. They may not set minimum or maximum amounts. They may not quietly punish customers for choosing a safer, traceable way to pay.
The notice from the Payments Association of Namibia is clear. It is also overdue.
For years, consumers have absorbed these practices as normal. A few dollars added at the till. A refusal to swipe unless the bill is “big enough”. A subtle nudge back to cash, as if convenience and safety were indulgences rather than basic expectations. None of it was legal. All of it was tolerated.
PAN’s intervention confirms what shoppers already suspected. The rules were never unclear. They were simply ignored.
The problem is not a lack of regulation. It is enforcement. Namibia’s payment system already operates under defined international card rules and domestic law. Visa and Mastercard prohibit surcharging.
The Payment System Management Act backs this up. Yet the behaviour persisted because there was no visible consequence for breaking the rules.
This is what regulatory drift looks like in practice. Not chaos, but quiet erosion. Small breaches repeated daily until they feel customary. By the time a public notice is issued, the damage is already embedded in behaviour.
Merchants argue about costs. Bank fees. Margins. Survival. Those pressures are real. But they are not the consumer’s problem. A business model that only works by shifting electronic payment costs onto customers is not being transparent. It is being evasive.
The notice makes an important point that deserves more attention. Penalising card use pushes people back to cash. Cash carries risks. Theft. Loss. Informality. A modern economy does not nudge its citizens towards vulnerability because enforcement feels inconvenient.
Banks are not exempt either. PAN places responsibility squarely on acquiring banks to ensure their merchants comply. This matters. Regulation that stops at “guidance” is not regulation. It is suggestion. If banks continue to look away, this notice will join a long list of well-worded warnings with no behavioural impact.
Consumers, for once, are being asked to play a role. Report non-compliance. Escalate. Speak up. That is welcome, but it is also telling. A system that relies on customers to police basic rules is already under strain.
This notice should not be read as a policy breakthrough. It is a correction. A reminder. A line being redrawn after it was allowed to fade.
The real test will be what follows. Whether complaints are acted on. Whether merchants change behaviour. Whether banks enforce their own agreements. Or whether this, too, becomes another document that explains how things should work while daily practice carries on unchanged.
No surcharges. No limits. No confusion. The rules were always there. What has been missing is the will to apply them.
*Briefly is a weekly column that is opinionated and analytical. It sifts through the noise to make sense of the numbers, trends and headlines shaping business and the economy with insight, wit and just enough scepticism to keep things interesting. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ARE NOT OUR OWN, we simply relay them as part of the conversation.
