THE South African Post Office (SAPO) says its social grants IT systems have been upgraded, just in time for the end-of-July payments cycle.
According to the SAPO, the upgrades will allow sufficient capacity to process grant payments transaction volumes involving social beneficiaries that have migrated to the new gold SASSA card.
The IT improvements that SAPO has made have increased its processing capacity to better than 160 transactions per second – an improvement of more than 700 per cent, and in line with banking industry standards.
“Our IT systems are ready for the upcoming month end payments and we are confident that social grants beneficiaries will witness a smooth payments experience. The technicians have been working tirelessly with industry stakeholders since the beginning of the month to optimise our transaction capacity. Infrastructure upgrades have also been implemented on Postbank’s connectivity to Bankserv to improve transaction speeds,” said SAPO COO Lindiwe Kwele.
Beneficiaries that switched to the new gold Sassa card do not have to go queue at the Post Office to access their money, as the money will be credited into the accounts and they can make transactions with their cards from any of the channels available to them.
The new cards do not work at the old pay-points, where they were previously paid in cash by CPS officials after handing in the old white SASSA card.
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“It is important for social grants beneficiaries to note that once you have switched to the new gold SASSA card, you cannot use the new card at your previous SASSA pay-point.”
“Your social grant money will automatically be paid into the new card and, if you so wish, you can withdraw cash at any ATM, over the till at shops such as Shoprite and Boxer, the Post Office or you can simply use your card to buy goods at any shops that accept bank cards,” says Kwele.
Accordingly to Kwele, the reason social grants beneficiaries are not able to use the new SASSA cards in the old pay-points is that, for proprietary reasons, the new social grants payment system is not compatible with the outgoing one.
SASSA is also in the process of rationalizing its pay-points, and some of them may be decommissioned. Meanwhile, the old white SASSA card will expire at the end of September and beneficiaries should use the limited time left to switch to the new one.
To get the new SASSA card, beneficiaries can take their ID to any SASSA office, a selected Post Office branch or a dedicated card-swap site. SAPO and SASSA have deployed teams throughout the country where dedicated temporary card swap sites are established using existing infrastructure.
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