Johannesburg – The Ministry of Home Affairs has announced the deployment of a comprehensive upgrade to its digital verification system.
The division announced on Monday (24th March 2025) that it stated that the upgraded digital verification system is “at the heart of both the public and private sector services in South Africa.”
The department added: “It is this verification system that allows government sectors, from government bonds to the Social Security Agency of South Africa (SASSA) and businesses in the financial sector, to verify client identity using biometric authentication, such as fingerprints and facial recognition, to the national population register.”
However, in recent years, the system has been suffering from inefficiency, with users reporting a failure rate of up to 50% against “hits” of these verifications.
“It also took up to 24 hours for the system to respond, and when the responses arrived, they were often very scattered with errors, which required a tedious process of manual verification,” the department said.
“Through the past few months, these errors have become a thing of the past thanks to the hard work and intensive work done by the department on this issue.
“Testing has led to upgraded systems not only dramatically speeding up performance, but also providing error rates above 1%.”
The sector is ready to deploy access to upgraded verification services to all valued clients in the public and private sector.
As part of ensuring the continued maintenance of this significantly improved system, after obtaining consent from the Minister of Finance, Minister of Home Affairs Dr. Leonschreiber led the official gazette to a new set of fees related to the use of this verification service.
“By maintaining the national population registration at the heart of our national security and economy, the cost of using the digital home affairs verification service by private sector businesses will only increase over a decade from April 1, 2025,” the department said.
“However, public sector users of services, including many government sectors and agencies, are not affected by the increase as government users remain waived from fees.”
The department said this approach would allow the sector to balance the need to invest in the National Population Registry.
Home Minister Leon Schreiber said:
“This marks the most important upgrade to the Home Affairs Verification Service since its inception, dramatically reducing waiting times whenever a client needs to verify his/her identity with the department to obtain a social grant or open a bank account.
“This upgrade is extremely important to supporting economic growth in the private sector.
“If this critical home affairs system is diminished, slow, or scattered with errors, it will negatively affect the ability of banks, insurance companies and other financial service providers to validate clients and carry out their business.”
Minister Schreiber added: “This investment in our population register is not only expired, but it is also important to provide a vision for a digital ID.
“The launch of a reformed verification system is further evidence of the progress that the interior is making in its journey of digital transformation to bring dignity to everyone.”
For updated regulations, please see: https://bit.ly/dha-gazette-52371
