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Pretoria – MasterCard and the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) announced on Tuesday that there are 10 million active Sassa Debit MasterCard cards in South Africa.
This is following the introduction of the new biometric grant payment disbursement system that commenced in March 2012.
Since March 2012, just under 22 million social grant beneficiaries have re-registered onto the new system introduced by Sassa to minimise fraudulent grant applications and collections and reduce grant administration costs by distributing all grant payments electronically.
A crucial feature of the Sassa card’s biometric functionality is that it positively identifies social grant recipients using unique identifiers such as fingerprints, voice and other personal information.
This means that the Sassa cards cannot be used by any person other than the approved beneficiary to collect his or her grant.
“Between April 2012 and June 2013, over 150 000 grants were cancelled, which has led to a saving of R150 million per annum,” explained Virginia Petersen CEO of Sassa.
The new system has already saved Sassa a considerable amount in grant administration costs.
Between March 2012 and July 2012, the Sassa debit MasterCard card was cited as the main contributing factor to the 4% growth in the country’s banked population from 63% in 2011, to 67% in 2012 according to the FinScope South Africa 2012 survey.
As at July 2012, 2.5 million Sassa MasterCard cards had been issued to grant recipients. Since then an additional 7.5 million cards have been issued to grant recipients which should further increase financial inclusion in South Africa.
- Fin24
This is following the introduction of the new biometric grant payment disbursement system that commenced in March 2012.
Since March 2012, just under 22 million social grant beneficiaries have re-registered onto the new system introduced by Sassa to minimise fraudulent grant applications and collections and reduce grant administration costs by distributing all grant payments electronically.
A crucial feature of the Sassa card’s biometric functionality is that it positively identifies social grant recipients using unique identifiers such as fingerprints, voice and other personal information.
This means that the Sassa cards cannot be used by any person other than the approved beneficiary to collect his or her grant.
“Between April 2012 and June 2013, over 150 000 grants were cancelled, which has led to a saving of R150 million per annum,” explained Virginia Petersen CEO of Sassa.
The new system has already saved Sassa a considerable amount in grant administration costs.
Between March 2012 and July 2012, the Sassa debit MasterCard card was cited as the main contributing factor to the 4% growth in the country’s banked population from 63% in 2011, to 67% in 2012 according to the FinScope South Africa 2012 survey.
As at July 2012, 2.5 million Sassa MasterCard cards had been issued to grant recipients. Since then an additional 7.5 million cards have been issued to grant recipients which should further increase financial inclusion in South Africa.
- Fin24
