THE South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has released a media statement stating that social grants would be paid without the use of a third party contractor as is currently the case.
According to the statement SASSA has already made direct transfers into approximately 2,4 million personal bank accounts for the month of March 2018. This file is processed for payment through National Treasury to Bankserv for payment from SASSA’s own Paymaster General Account.
In March, SASSA paid an amount of over R2,6 billion to those beneficiaries who receive their grants from their commercial bank accounts. The rest of the remaining 8.4 million beneficiaries will be paid through the various outlets using ATM’s, Point of sale devices and in cash at SASSA Pay points.
This month SASSA will also test its capacity to directly pay the rest of the beneficiaries using ATM’s and Point of Sale (POS) at different outlets without using CPS infrastructure.
A total of 100 000 beneficiaries who transact at ATM’s and POS devices using their SASSA card will have their money deposited into their SASSA cards directly by SASSA in March as part of the test that will be run. If this test is successful, the only beneficiaries who will not fall under SASSA direct payments in the short term will be close to 2.9 million
SASSA has already issued a tender for a contractor to assist with these cash payments and the appointment will be made in due course.
Beneficiaries of social grants are advised to ignore agents who claim that the current SASSA card has expire and is being replaced by another card. There is only one SASSA card, and it is the one which has the government coat of arms on.
The current SASSA card will still be valid until December 2018 and there is currently no need for beneficiaries to move to another card.
Every social grant beneficiary is also advised that it is a personal choice whether to have their social grant paid into a personal bank account. Any beneficiary who wants their grants to be paid directly into their bank account must provide details of their personal bank account to SASSA.
For more information phone 0800 60 10 11.
