za:ref
zaref / docs / exchange-rate-api

Official rand exchange rate API

The SARB indicative daily rand rates against the US dollar, pound, euro and yen, plus the nominal effective exchange rate index, as cited JSON with history. This is the official daily reference fixing used for accounting, tax and compliance, not a streaming market feed, and the endpoint says so.

For near-live crypto pricing in rand, the separate crypto-prices live feed serves VALR spot for every listed ZAR pair with a sixty-second cache.

Series

GET /v1/fx-rates

SARB indicative daily ZAR exchange rates against USD, GBP, EUR and JPY, plus the nominal effective exchange rate (trade-weighted) index.

$0.005 per call · updates: daily (SA business days) · effective 2026-07-15 · history at /v1/fx-rates/history ($0.01)
GET /v1/crypto-prices

Live ZAR crypto prices from VALR's public market data: last traded, bid/ask, 24-hour high/low/volume and daily change for BTC, ETH and every other ZAR pair on the exchange.

$0.005 per call · updates: live (fetched on request, 60-second cache)

How agents pay

No account, no API key. Paid endpoints reply HTTP 402 with exact payment requirements; an x402 client pays USDC on Base (about two seconds to settle) and retries automatically. Invalid input is rejected free with a 400 before any payment is challenged. See the x402 quickstart.

Questions

Is this a live FX feed?
No, by design. It is the official SARB daily reference rate with a citation, which is what accounting, contracts and tax need. Live tick data is licensed market data and a different product.
Which currencies are covered?
USD, GBP, EUR and JPY against the rand, plus the trade-weighted nominal effective exchange rate index, all from the same SARB publication.
When does the rate update?
Each SA business day on SARB publication. zaref sweeps twice daily and cross-checks the stored value against the SARB API in its daily audit.

Related

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