1. Introductory remarks
This article is about the payment services and the conduct of payments experienced in Outapi in the Oshana Region. It is important to have a quick grasp of the term National Payment System before going any further. Domestic transactions are created and paid for through and in the National Payment System (NPS) in Namibia. The NPS refers to the payment system in Namibia as a whole and consists of four components:
The settlement system is a central bank system that facilitates the exchange of funds at inter-bank level for example the National Inter-bank Settlement System (NISS).
The clearing system is a private sector owned system that clears retail payments, for example cheque payments, of payment system participants or banking institutions. An example is the cheque clearing system (CPS), which is operated by Namclear Pty Limited.

A payment arrangement is a blanket term, which encompasses institutions, procedures and regulations necessary for any payment to be made. Consider all banking institutions in Namibia or payment system participants as part of the payment arrangement.
Payment system is also a blanket term, which refers to anything or a mechanism that facilitates the transfer of funds from a payer to a payee. At a wholesale level an example of a payment system is NISS, which is mentioned above.
It is important to mention that there is an interaction of the above components for any inter-bank transaction to take place. A payment by a particular payee through their bank A to a payee through bank B has to be cleared within a certain clearing system and then settled in NISS for value to be realized by a payee in question.
2. Main event
All started when a group of four people including myself left from Ruacana to Outapi in the early hours of Monday, December 24, 2007. Outapi is one of Namibia’s fast growing towns and lies about 170 kilometres North-west of Oshakati and approximately 70 kilometres from Namibia’s untapped tourist attraction, Ruacana. Outapi boosts shopping and commercial centres like City Centre, Home City, FNB Centre, and Outapi SME Park. To add spice to the story, all banking institutions are represented in the town, a situation essential for any economic and social expansion.
The purpose of the trip was to conduct banking transactions and activate my mobile phone services at a mobile services provider. Alas! I was told that a card is not a means of payment at this mobile services company, and went my way to find cash from my bank. I was flabbergasted to find a long queue at my bank’s automated teller machine (ATM) containing approximately 50 people and did not have time to wait for about 25 to 50 minutes to get cash. After meandering for few minutes, an idea came to my mind of getting cash from another bank’s ATM located in City Centre Complex across Tsandi road. Luckily I managed to get the required funds for the mobile services contract at another bank’s ATM only incurring fees less than N$5.00, I was told. The procedures at the ATM were simple and only two people were in front of me. On the whole, I did not spend more than 2 minutes to get funds from the machine.