The South African Social Security Agency will introduce mandatory biometric enrolment for grant beneficiaries at its offices from 1 September. The agency says this is to curb fraud within the social grants system.
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) will introduce mandatory biometric enrolment for beneficiaries at its offices from 1 September.
Until now the system has only applied to applicants for the Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant and to beneficiaries whose grants are being reviewed by SASSA. Now it will be extended to all new applications. Beneficiaries who want to change their personal details will also have to enter biometric data such as fingerprints or facial scans.
SASSA spokesperson Paseka Letsatsi said all grant applications captured and approved from 1 September would include biometric fingerprint enrolment or facial recognition through electronic Know Your Client (eKYC).
SASSA is “ramping up its efforts to improve its systems, detect and effectively root out any fraudulent elements in the social grant administration,” Letsatsi said in a statement on Monday.
He said SASSA had set up the necessary infrastructure and tools in all its offices to carry out the biometrics.
Already, beneficiaries whose cases are under review by SASSA — because of changes in their financial or personal circumstances — have to undergo biometric registration. In May, SASSA said about 210,000 beneficiaries had been flagged after data from credit bureaus showed undisclosed income. Their grants are withheld until they complete an in-person verification at a SASSA office, but this has left eligible beneficiaries at risk of delayed or suspended payments.
During a briefing in July, SASSA also promised to extend operating hours and employ more staff as thousands of grant beneficiaries are called in for in-person reviews.
Letsatsi said biometric data is being taken to ensure grant applicants are “authentic” and to reduce fraud and errors in SASSA’s systems. This is especially because it’s hard for staff at SASSA offices to detect fraudulent green ID books.
He also said that SASSA is committed to paying the right social grant to beneficiaries. “The agency will not hesitate to act against any of its officials should they be suspected of working with anyone to defraud its systems,” Letsatsi added.
© 2025 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, not tracking users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.
Poor governance: Ineffective and inefficient governance structures.
Dance Bloom
Bitter koud — very cold. An Afrikaans phrase meaning ‘bitter cold’, often used to describe the cold weather during winter.Example: “Oh, my gosh! It’s bitter koud outside!”
Mud Eye
The last thing I want to do to you is to hurt you, but it is still an option