Understandably it’s frustrating to receive an ‘Insufficient Funds’ error message when paying via Pay by bank, if you believe you have enough money in your account to cover a payment. However, there are several reasons why this can occur.
One reason is that we use the lower of two balances in a customer’s bank account when processing payments. These are the Current balance and the Available balance.
The Current balance is the officially available balance before any pending transactions have cleared, while the Available balance is the amount of money that is actually available to spend. This is usually smaller than the Current balance.
If either of these two balances is lower than the requested payment amount, the payment will fail, resulting in an ‘Insufficient Funds’ error.
1. If you have recently funded your account, it’s possible that the funds did not fully clear into the account when you attempted to make a payment.
2. If you are using overdraft or credit facilities on your account.
To avoid this issue, we recommend checking both your Current and Available balances before making a payment to ensure you have enough funds available before attempting to pay.
Bank fees are common across South African banks when you use various services, such as making a payment via Pay by bank. These fees are often charged immediately following an interaction with your account.
The most common source of fees incurred by users of Stitch include but are not limited to:
For a comprehensive understanding of the fees you may incur, we ask that you contact your bank directly.
Note: The exact steps necessary to locate your account information may vary depending on the internet banking portal and the bank you use. Please contact your bank’s customer support for assistance if you encounter any difficulty.
Absa Bank:
Capitec Bank:
First National Bank (FNB):
Nedbank:
Standard Bank:
Tyme Bank:
Due to the current complexity surrounding credit accounts, we do not support paying from credit facilities or credit accounts. As of now, Stitch Pay by bank supports payments from Cheque and/or Current accounts only.
If you’ve attempted to link or pay from a credit account, you may see a combination of screens, depending on the account and bank you’re using.
When initiating an FNB payment or linking your FNB account via Stitch SafeLink, you may be prompted by FNB’s in-app notification service with a warning. See an example of what this looks like below 👇.
As alarming as the warning appears, it is merely a request for you to accept and confirm the payment, beneficiary addition or account linking.
1. Select the Yes, Continue option.
2. Enable the switch but tapping it. This will present the Approve button.
3. Tap the Approve button and, once confirmed, return back to the application you were linking your account to or initiating a payment from.
If this happens, you can:
If the above fails feel free to contact Stitch support using the form here 🧑🏿💻
It’s possible that you may see an error indicating your bank account is blocked when attempting to make a payment with Stitch.
You might see an error like this because:
To unblock your account, log into your online banking portal with your existing online banking credentials or contact your bank for additional information regarding online web portal activation. You can use the link below for your bank:
If the above fails feel free to contact Stitch support using the form here 🧑🏿💻.
If a Stitch service is disrupted or unable to handle a particular action, you might see an error that says “Something went wrong” and an invitation to retry your action.
Alternatively, you might see a 500 error code page.
This may happen for a number of reasons. Some common reasons are:
1. Your device is incompatible (usually this includes older models outside of ES6 support)
2. There has been an unhandled exception by Stitch
3. Intermittent service disruption has been caused by a particular bank
For all methods above, we ask that you retry the action.
If the above fails feel free to contact Stitch support using the form here 🧑🏿💻.
We understand how important your financial data is, so we’re focussed on ensuring the highest level security and privacy – and we ensure Stitch meets all local data protection standards, including PCI DSS certification.
When you make a payment with Stitch, we require you to enter a one time pin (OTP) or to authenticate the payment using your mobile banking app. Learn more about how we manage data here.
Stitch is a payments provider that makes it fast, easy and safe to pay the businesses you love. If a business uses Stitch to power their payments, you can pay through Stitch for products and services, make deposits into digital accounts, and request refunds and withdrawals.
You can pay with Stitch using your bank account (Pay by bank), Capitec Pay, credit or debit card, manual EFT, debit order or DebiCheck and cash paid at an ATM or at a retail till.
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is a security measure often required by your bank when you’re logging into your account, requesting data from the account or initiating a payment from the account.
MFA processes across banks are not designed equally and can be surfaced in a number of ways. Banks may ask for MFA in these ways:
In-app notifications are sent to your device directly over an internet connection.
SMS OTP notifications are messages sent to your device over a cellular network – they appear with other SMS messages.
USSD notifications are prompts / messages sent to your device over a cellular network.
ABSA makes use of in-app notifications when asking customers for MFA, or Multifactor Authentication, for security purposes. These are notifications presented via the ABSA app installed on your device. It’s important that you have an internet data connection to receive these notifications.
This form of notification is required from ABSA users when:
Capitec makes use of in-app notifications when asking customers for MFA, or Multifactor Authentication, for security purposes. These are notifications presented via the Capitec app installed on your device. It’s important that you have an internet data connection to receive these notifications.
This form of notification is required from Capitec users when:
FNB makes use of both in-app and SMS notifications when asking customers for MFA, or Multifactor Authentication, for security purposes. These are notifications presented via the FNB app installed on your device or sent via SMS OTP. It’s important that you have an internet data connection to receive the in-app notifications and cellular signal to receive the SMS OTPs.
The following forms of MFA are required from FNB when:
Nedbank makes use of both cellular USSD and SMS OTP notifications when asking customers for MFA, or Multifactor Authentication, for security purposes. These are notifications presented through your cellular network. It’s important that you have an internet data connection to receive the in-app notifications and cellular signal to receive these notifications.
The following forms of MFA are required from Nedbank when:
Standard Bank makes use of cellular SMS OTP notifications when asking customers for MFA, or Multifactor Authentication, for security purposes. These are notifications presented via your cellular network. It’s important you have cellular signal to receive these notifications.
The following forms of MFA are required from Standard Bank when:
Standard Bank makes use of cellular SMS OTP notifications when asking customers for MFA, or Multifactor Authentication, for security purposes. These are notifications presented via your cellular network. It’s important you have cellular signal to receive these notifications.
The following forms of MFA are required from Standard Bank when:
Payments made via the Access Bank Internet Banking platform require an OTP. The OTP can only be generated from “Entrust Identity”, a third-party authenticator platform used by Access Bank. Entrust Identity works on iOS and Android phones. The Entrust Identity app can be downloaded on respective mobile app stores.
To activate the Entrust Identity app, the account holder has to:
💡 The call from the bank agent can take time - sometimes over a working day. But the account holder can also call the agent: 01 280 2500
The bank activation agent will call the account holder at an unspecified time and walk them through the process. The process usually involves:
After the account holder enrolls their Access Bank profile on Entrust Identity, they can:
To make a cash payment at an ATM, follow these steps:
When you’re making a payment using Pay by bank, you will see an option to tick ‘Remember me.” This makes it easier for you to make a payment in one click whenever you come back to the same site or app by giving permission for your banking details to be stored in your browser for the future.
You can choose to unlink a previously linked bank account by going to the “manage accounts” section of the app or site where you’ve linked your account. From there, select the account you wish to unlink and confirm.
In order to make a payment to a business or site from your bank account using Stitch Pay by bank, you’ll need to log into your account securely and authorise the payment. All banking details are securely encrypted and never shared with any third parties.
You can choose to save or remember your bank account details on a particular app or site that you frequently pay to. These details are saved in your browser so that you can log in with your details once, and pay securely in just one click whenever you come back, without the need to log in again. Stitch stores details safely so you never have to worry about your data.
To pay securely using Pay by bank:
An Instant EFT payment, or Instant Electronic Funds Transfer, is a payment made directly from your bank account, to the bank account of a business you’re looking to pay into. Instant EFTs settle faster than manual transfers.
While Instant EFT payments are still possible, South Africa is shifting toward Pay by bank instead. To make an Instant EFT or bank to bank payment with Stitch, select ‘Pay by bank‘ as your preferred payment method in the checkout flow of any business that uses Stitch for payments. Choose your bank and log in securely using your online banking details. Then proceed to confirm and authorise the payment.