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Johannesburg - Electronic payments provider, Net 1 UEPS Technologies, Inc. announced that its subsidiary, Cash Paymaster Services has again ensured uninterrupted service delivery to South Africa's 10.6 million social grant recipients for the April 2017 pay-cycle.
Net 1 said in a statement that on Friday, CPS had credited the bank accounts of all 10.6 million grant recipients with their April 2017 grants.
They went further to say that at the close of business on April 3, 2017, 6.8 million of these recipients had already accessed their grants via the National Payment System or pay points, with a total aggregate value of approximately R7.8bn processed.
“CPS processed a record 535,000 transactions per hour on April 1, 2017, without any service interruption or degradation,” the statement said.
Net1 has been in the center of a social grants storm since 2012 when CPS won a R10bn tender to electronically distribute social grants to recipients in South Africa on behalf of the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa).
But the contract ran into problems in April 2014 when the Constitutional Court declared it invalid owing to irregularities in the awarding of the deal. The court further ruled that Sassa needed to redo the tender process.
However, after launching a new tender process in 2015, SASSA subsequently did not award a new contract as it said the bids were non-compliant.
Net1 did not participate in the fresh tender process and at a Parliament briefings this year, Sassa said that it was not ready to assume the payment function itself by April 1, as previously planned.
Last month, the Constitutional Court ordered Net1’s contract to distribute grants to beneficiaries for a year to avoid a “potential catastrophe” and slammed the government’s handling of the program.
The debacle has sparked confusion and concerns over whether millions of people will continue to receive grants, putting the country’s welfare system in limbo.
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