(1)(a) Only 10% of 5.3 million beneficiaries that are paid by Postbank were impacted.
(i) The glitch impacted beneficiaries across all provinces nationally (10% of 5.3 million beneficiaries that are paid via Postbank).
(ii) The glitch impacted elderly beneficiaries that were supposed to receive their grant payments during that period.
(1)(b) The IT challenges were due to post migration issues relating to different factors. These include time cuts due to communication capacity between different systems. The issue was resolved on the same day (5 September 2023) at 4 pm and since then the system has been stable.
(1)(c) The Postbank has implemented the following measures in relation to the October 2023 social grants payments preparations:-
The new payments system was tested in accordance with acceptable industry system testing protocols including Component Integration Testing (CIT), System Integration Testing (SIT) and Industry Testing prior to the system going live.
2. No. The IT challenges did not affect the depositing of funds to any beneficiaries’ accounts but rather impacted the withdrawal ability of funds for some beneficiaries.
3. No fraudulent activity has been identified and/or reported to date.
4. As part of the retailer onboarding process, retailers received training and training manuals regarding the withdrawal process. Additionally, they provide ongoing training to their employees through their training centres countrywide on customer care, query escalation and withdrawals using merchant points of sale.
5. The Postbank has the capability to provide bulk SMS which will be utilised to provide beneficiaries with information in the event the Postbank has payment challenges. However, the Postbank was unable to utilise it at the time as it did not have updated cell phone details of most social grant recipients.
Thank you.