The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has cautioned its beneficiaries against clicking on suspicious links. This comes after reports that several beneficiaries have been asked to provide their personal information for grant verification.
We would like to bring to your attention that there has been a fraudulent eKYC link circulating, which is being sent to beneficiaries to verify their information after grant applications.
Sassa distributes over 18 million permanent grant payments, including the Older Persons pension grant, Disability grant, War Veterans grant, Care Dependency grant, Foster Child grant, Child Support grant, Child Support grant Top-Up and Grant-in-aid. This is in addition to the 8 million Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant beneficiaries.
Sassa warned beneficiaries that their eKYC identity verification is currently down for maintenance. Therefore, any requests to beneficiaries instructing them to verify their identity should be ignored.
Please be advised that the official eKYC system is currently down for maintenance, and we are working tirelessly with the relevant departments to ensure that it will be up and running as soon as possible.
The agency instructed beneficiaries to immediately report any requests for identity verification to the agency.
Sassa has apologized for any inconvenience that this may have caused and has pleaded for patience among grant beneficiaries, saying "your security and trust are of the utmost importance to us".
The agency will notify beneficiaries once the eKYC system has been restored.
