By Johannah Malogadihlare
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber has officially introduced a complete upgraded digital verification system to facilitate services that require South Africa’s identity document.
The verification system will speed up the identification process using biometric features like fingerprints and facial recognition against the National Population Register.
“This marks the most significant upgrade to the Home Affairs verification service since it was launched and 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,” Schreiber said in a statement.
The upgrade will improve service delivery while supporting economic growth in both the public and private sectors.
“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,” he added.
Lately, the system has reported a failure rate of up to 50% on verifications, delaying the identification process.
However, the department said delays would be a thing of the past since testing has confirmed that the upgraded system was not only capable of dramatically providing faster performance, but it has delivered an error rate of well below 1%.
After obtaining concurrence from Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, the department has gazetted a new set of fees associated with the use of this verification service to ensure its ongoing maintenance.
The department said fees for the use of the digital verification service by private sector companies would increase for the first time in over a decade with effect from 1 April 2025.
“This investment in our population register is not only overdue, but also important for delivering on the vision for digital ID, as outlined by President Cyril Ramaphosa during the State of the Nation Address, as a secure and efficient population register forms the cornerstone of digital ID,” Schreiber said.
He also said the launch of the reformed verification system was further proof that the department was making progress in the journey of digital transformation.
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