Where was it issued?
Which system applies
AARTO applies in the municipalities named in the 2026 proclamations and nowhere else. Pick the one printed on your notice; if it is not listed, you are on the Criminal Procedure Act route.
62 municipalities · type to narrow
Until you choose, treat every AARTO figure on this page as conditional. It is wrong for most of the country.
Paying a traffic fine
There is no single national counter. What you can use depends on who issued the notice and which system they issued it under, and the reference you quote matters more than the channel you choose. This page sets out the rails, what each one needs from you, and what paying does and does not admit.
Pay by
The discount is a deadline, not a discount code
Paying inside the window costs less than paying outside it, and the window runs from the day the document is deemed served rather than from the date printed on it.
- 50%Off the penalty amountsection 17(1)(d)
- 32 daysFrom deemed serviceregulation 17(2)
- 10 daysAdded before the clock starts, if posted or sent electronicallysection 30(2)
Pay by
The good path, in one sentence
Work out the deemed service date first, pay the discounted amount before that window closes, and keep the receipt with the notice number on it. Everything else on this page is what happens when that does not happen.
Sections 17(1)(d) and 30(2); regulation 17(2)
The rails
Where a fine can actually be paid
There is no single national counter. What is open to you depends on who issued the notice and which system they issued it under — and no channel below can see a matter another authority never handed it.
← swipe to see the whole table →
| Channel | What it needs from you | What it can see | What to watch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your banking app | The notice number, exactly as printed | Whichever authorities your bank has loaded as beneficiaries | Convenient, but the list of authorities is your bank’s, not the country’s. An authority missing from it is not an authority you do not owe. |
| A retail service counter | The notice itself, or its number | Whichever authorities that retailer has an arrangement with | The channel with no European equivalent, and for many readers the only one that does not require a bank app. Ask for the receipt and keep it. |
| The Post Office or a courier counter | The notice itself, or its number | Varies by branch and by authority | Historically the default channel, and still the one most notices name. |
| Electronic transfer | The authority’s own banking details and the reference from the notice | The authority you are paying, and only that one | The reference is what allocates the payment. Getting it wrong does not usually reverse the transfer; it produces a paid amount that is not attached to your matter. |
| The AARTO service | Your notice number | AARTO matters only | Nothing outside an AARTO municipality appears here, which is the single most common reason a reader concludes they are clear when they are not. |
| A municipality’s own service | Varies — a notice number, sometimes a number plate | That municipality only | The larger metros run their own. A matter issued by one metro will not show on another’s. |
Channels, not amounts. This table states no fee and no charge: none of them is set by an instrument this site holds, and a convenience fee a channel charges is a matter between you and that channel.
Cape Town
The city runs its own traffic service and its own payment channels. A matter it issued is visible there and is generally not visible anywhere else, which is why a reader who checks only one national service can be told they are clear.
Johannesburg metro police
Johannesburg is one of the two metros where AARTO has operated since long before the 2026 rollout — including the demerit-points chain. A matter that began there before the current regulations took effect is concluded under the older ones.
The reference
What the reference on your notice is for
It is the only thing that attaches your money to your matter. A payment with the wrong reference is not a payment that failed; it is a payment that succeeded against nothing.
- Copy it exactly as printedIncluding any letters and any leading zeros. A reference is not a description and it is not a case number you can paraphrase.
- One reference, one matterTwo notices are two payments. Combining them into one transfer produces a single unallocated amount, and unpicking that is slower than paying twice.
- Keep what came backThe confirmation, the receipt, or the counter slip. Two of the fees below fall away only if you can produce proof you already complied.
Your own figure
What happens to the amount on your notice
This site does not price offences, so the module below starts from the figure your notice already carries and shows what the rules do to it.
What you pay, and when it changes
The figure on your own notice, in rand. This site does not hold the schedule that prices individual offences, so your notice is the source.
Where that amount comes from
The regulations do not print a rand figure for each offence directly. They give each offence a number of penalty units, fix the monetary value of one unit, and multiply. This site holds the unit value and the formula; it does not hold the table of units per offence.
penaltyUnits x penaltyUnitRand
penaltyAmount x (1 - discountFraction)That is the value of a UNIT. It is not the fine for anything, and this site never presents it as one.
Your amount through the chain
Enter the amount on your notice and this fills in.
- A rejected representation adds its own fee
- Making a representation is free. If it is rejected, a fee attaches — and the discount then reopens for a fresh window from the day the result is deemed served, which is a rule almost nothing else carries.R100 · Schedule 2, paragraph 5.10; section 18(7)(b)(ii)
- Instalments and the discount are mutually exclusive
- If you arrange to pay in instalments, you are not entitled to the discount and the full penalty and applicable fees become payable. A reader who takes instalments to make it manageable pays double what the discounted figure would have been.
← swipe to see the whole table →
| Fee | Amount | Provision |
|---|---|---|
| Courtesy letter | R100 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.1; section 19(2)(b)(ii) |
| Enforcement order | R100 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.2; section 20(3)(a) |
| Representation that is rejected | R100 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.10; section 18(7)(b)(ii) |
| Appeal or review application | R200 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.5; section 29B(2) |
| Demerit-point enquiry, once off | R60 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.3; section 33 |
| Demerit-point enquiry, six months | R120 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.3 |
| Demerit-point enquiry, twelve months | R240 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.3 |
| Notice of a failed or dishonoured instalment | R60 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.6 (Form AARTO 17) |
| Notice of a failed or dishonoured penalty payment | R60 | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.7 (Form AARTO 16) |
| Receiving entity fee | 3% | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.8; section 20(8) |
| Attending a rehabilitation programme | “Market related fee” | Schedule 2, paragraph 5.9 |
From 30 June 2026 · Schedule 2 to the AARTO Regulations, 2026. Several of these are the same amount and they are NOT the same fee: each has its own provision and its own trigger, and one is not a number at all — the instrument states a standard there, and its own words are printed in the cell.
What paying means
What paying does, and what it forecloses
This is the question readers ask last and should ask first.
Under AARTO, paying disposes of the matter administratively. It is not a court conviction, and it does not produce a criminal record for the infringement. What it does do is close your own opportunity to contest it: the route for making a representation runs on the same clock as the discount, so a reader who pays first and objects afterwards has usually spent the objection.
If you intend to contest the matter, the order of operations is the reverse of the instinctive one — make the representation first. It costs nothing to make. If it is rejected a fee attaches, and the discount then reopens for a fresh window running from the day the result is deemed served, which is a rule almost nothing else in this market carries.
← swipe to see the whole table →
| What happened | Discount | What that means for the amount | Provision |
|---|---|---|---|
| The window simply passed | Gone | The full penalty is payable, and the chain continues to the next document with its own fee. | reg 17(2) |
| A representation was made and rejected | Reopens | A fresh window of 32 days runs from the day the result is deemed served. The rejection attracts the representations fee; it does not cost the discount. | reg 17(3) |
| An appeal or review was decided | Reopens | A further 32 days runs from the outcome. The application itself carries its own separate fee. | reg 17(4) |
| An instalment arrangement was made | Forfeited | The full penalty and the applicable fees become payable. This is the only row on this table a reader chooses, and it is chosen by people trying to make the amount manageable. | reg 17(5) |
From 30 June 2026 · regulation 17 of the AARTO Regulations, 2026. The two reopening rows are carried almost nowhere else, and the forfeiting row is the one most likely to cost a reader money they did not expect to spend.
If nothing is paid
The chain does not stop because you stopped reading it
A courtesy letter follows, then an enforcement order, each with its own fee. Once an enforcement order stands unsatisfied, no driving licence, professional driving permit, road-traffic or transport permit, or licence disc may be issued to you or for a vehicle registered in your name until the order is complied with or revoked. And under AARTO the laws on prescription do not apply — the amount does not lapse with time. The document chain in full.
Sections 19, 20(3), 20(5) and 31(2)
Outside AARTO
If your notice was not issued in an AARTO municipality
None of the figures above applies to you. A different Act, different documents, and no national schedule of amounts at all.
Outside an AARTO area
CPA- Written notice
- The ordinary out-of-court route. A written notice is served on you with an option to admit guilt and pay the amount endorsed on it, without appearing in court.Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977, section 56
- Summons
- Where a summons issues instead, the same admission-of-guilt option may be endorsed on it.Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977, sections 54 and 57
- The amount
- Not fixed by the Act. It is determined by the magistrate for that district, or set case by case within a ceiling — so there is no single number for this route, anywhere in the country.
- The ceiling
- Fixed by a separate ministerial notice in the Gazette, which is not held here. This site does not print a ceiling it has not read.
Outside AARTO
Outside AARTO there is no national fine schedule at all
The Criminal Procedure Act supplies the mechanism for an out-of-court traffic penalty — a written notice or a summons, endorsed with an option to admit guilt and pay — but it fixes no amount. The amount is determined by the magistrate for the district, or set case by case within a ceiling that a separate ministerial notice fixes. There is therefore no such thing as “the South African traffic fine” outside an AARTO area, and a single national figure cannot be quoted honestly.
Figures for this route that circulate on other sites come from a ministerial notice more than a decade old, and this site does not repeat them. The amount that applies to you is the one endorsed on your notice or summons by the authority that issued it.
Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977, ss.56, 57 · Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act 46 of 1998, N/A — as amended by Act 4 of 2019; consolidation to 30 June 2010 vendored, Amendment Act 4/2019 full text vendored
Why the difference matters more than the amount
The two routes are not two prices for the same thing. The AARTO route is administrative: it has its own documents, its own clocks, its own fees and an escalation chain that runs whether or not you engage with it. The Criminal Procedure Act route is a criminal-procedure one, where paying the endorsed amount admits guilt and disposes of the charge. Reading one with the other’s rules is the most common mistake in this market, and it is the reason the scope selector sits at the top of every page here that carries a figure.
The charge book
The charge book is not published anywhere we can reach
The amounts, penalty units and demerit points for individual offences live in Schedule 3 to the AARTO Regulations, 2026. That schedule is published in later parts of the Government Gazette issue that carries the regulations, and those parts do not resolve from any source tried — the national government site, the AARTO sites and the public gazette archives alike. So this site does not hold the charge book, and it will not reproduce one from a third-party transcription: a per-offence amount copied off another website is exactly the kind of figure that is wrong for a year before anyone notices.
The amount for your own matter is printed on your own notice, and it is the binding one. What this site can tell you is how that amount is arrived at, what the discount does to it, and which fee attaches at which stage.
AARTO Regulations, 2026 (GN R.7646) Schedule 3 (parts 2-8 of GG 54922) — GG 54922 (Regulation Gazette), 30 June 2026, part 1 of 8
The rehabilitation fee
One fee in the schedule is not a number
The fee for attending a rehabilitation programme is stated in the fee schedule as a standard rather than an amount. That is neither a figure nor a gap in the schedule: it is what the instrument says. This site therefore prints the schedule’s own words in quotation marks in the fee table, and does not convert them into a range, a typical amount or a guess.
If a rehabilitation programme is proposed to you, the fee is set by whoever runs it, within whatever the authority accepts as market related. Ask for it in writing before you commit.
Verification status
Nobody has signed these figures off
Every value on this site is recorded as research: transcribed from the cited instrument, and not yet checked by the reviewer who is accountable for it. That is a statement about this site, not about the instruments. Where a figure decides something for you, read it against the citation printed beside it.