Digital ID system upgrade and price changes for South Africa WRITTEN By Myles Illidge

[Nat Quinn]

The Department of Home Affairs has rolled out a comprehensive upgrade to South Africa’s digital verification system, which will greatly improve the system’s efficiency.

The system enables government departments ranging from the National Treasury to the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) to verify client identities against the National Population Register using biometric features.

It will also enable businesses in the financial sector to do the same.

According to Home Affairs, the system has been plagued by inefficiencies in recent years, with users reporting a failure rate of up to 50% when trying to verify identities against the National Population Register.

“It also routinely took up to 24 hours for the system to respond, and when the responses did arrive, they were often littered with errors that they required a cumbersome process of manual verification,” it said.

“Thanks to the diligent and focused work on this problem by the department over the past few months, these errors are now set to become a thing of the past.”

Home Affairs’ testing of the system has confirmed that it is capable of dramatically faster performance and delivers a failure rate of less than 1%.

“The department is ready to roll out access to the upgraded verification service to all our valued clients across the public and private sectors,” it said.

Notably, this will come with a price hike for private-sector clients. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber gazetted a new set of fees associated with using the verification service.

“Fees for the use of the Home Affairs digital verification service by private sector companies will increase for the first time in over a decade with effect from 1 April 2025,” it said.

According to the notice published in the Government Gazette, the new fees are as follows:

Any person or institution on behalf of, or on the written instruction of, any such person — R10 per transaction
Any state department, municipality, or statutory body — No fee
Any organisation, body, or institution whose main activity is insurance or banking — R5,000 for 5,000 transactions or part thereof, and R10 per transaction
Any other organisation, body, society, or institution — R5,000 for 5,000 transactions or portion thereof, and R10 per transaction

Leon Schreiber, South Africa’s Minister of Home Affairs
Public sector users, including government departments and agencies, are unaffected by the fee changes as government users are exempt.

“This approach enables the Department to balance the need to invest in the National Population Register while not negatively affecting public finances,” said Home Affairs.

According to Schreiber, the rollout will support the public and private sectors in improving service delivery.

“The upgrade will dramatically reduce waiting times whenever a client needs to verify their identity with the department to obtain a social grant or open a bank account,” the minister stated.

“When this vital Home Affairs system is down, slow, or littered with errors, it negatively impacts upon the ability of banks, insurance companies and other financial service providers to verify clients and conduct business.”

Schreiber explained that this investment in the population register is overdue and an important step in delivering on the vision of a digital identity system for South Africa.

President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the country’s plans to invest in digital infrastructure to expand government service access during his State of the Nation Address in February 2025.

He said the changes would include revamping the gov.za platform and the launch of a digital identity system.

“As we work to reform the public service and build the capability of the state, we will harness technology to transform the way government works,” Ramaphosa said.

“We will invest in digital public infrastructure to give South Africans access to government services, anytime, anywhere, through a relaunched gov.za platform.”

“At the heart of this transformation will be the implementation of a digital identity system,” Ramaphosa added.

He said the digital infrastructure investments would bolster the relationship between citizens and government while making government services “accessible to every person at a touch”.

 

SOURCE:Digital ID system upgrade and price changes for South Africa – MyBroadband

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