Many Sassa beneficiaries use their Sassa gold cards to collect their Sassa grants however, many Sassa grant recipients may have found that their gold cards are expiring.
Postbank's spokesperson, Bongani Diako, explains that the gold card has a standard life span of 5 years.
Most of the gold cards were issued in 2018, when Postbank, which is a subsidiary of the Post Office, got the contract to pay Sassa grants. Around 175 000 cards have expired in March and 800 000 cards in April, says Dr Diako.
The number of cards that will be expiring is set to increase as just under 3 million gold cards are set to expire in June and July.
Diako says that Postbank has begun the process of reissuing and replacing gold cards in the month of expiration through Post Office branches to ensure that they don't have large volumes of people coming forward to collect their new cards.
He goes on to say that they have experienced problems with this process, especially in the month of April and thus decided to introduce a new way to collect the Sassa grant without a card to ensure that grants are received without interruption.
What is Needed To Collect A Sassa Grant Without a Card?
A closed-looped system will be used to make sure that the correct people are collecting their Sassa grants. To collect a Sassa grant without a card, beneficiaries will need to produce the following:
- ID number
- Sassa gold card Pin
Postbank has made it clear that this method of Sassa grant payment has been approved by the Payment Association of South Africa after questions were raised about the new method of payment illegally extending the life of a Sassa gold card.
This new system is open to all those who are collecting their Sassa grant using a Sassa gold card but is mainly targeted at those whose cards are expiring.
