The Common Monetary Area (CMA) Cross-Border Oversight Committee has made a decision to stop the current cross-border Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) credit interim solutions for CMA countries.

The CMA countries include Lesotho, Eswatini, Namibia and South Africa and these are scheduled to go on until September.

As per the statement by the Bankers Association of Lesotho (BAL), the changes are going to impact debit orders and payments, adding that effective from September 16, all CMA participants will not allow any aeft processing in their domestic systems.

The cross-border payments and collections will be impacted such that EFT payments to account holders in Eswatini, Namibia and SA will still be made possible, however with additional information needed and these would now be paid out as a Global Payment transfer.

Account holders will still receive an EFT payment from CMA country, but this will be received as a global payment, and cross-border collections will no longer be possible for Basotho with another CMA country service provider through their Lesotho account, service providers. 

BAL states that cross-border collections will be prohibited and foreign entities that have presence in Lesotho must be collected via Lesotho counterparts, irrespective of whether the creditor commercial agreement is between the foreign collectors or entity and Lesotho customer.

Foreign collectors or entities without a presence in Lesotho are urged to open bank accounts in Lesotho to collect all debit orders in line with the current Lesotho EFT payments Clearing House Rules.