Cashless ATMs for SASSA recipients

Johannesburg – The South African Post Office has launched cashless ATMs to serve as additional payment points for South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) social grant recipients. 

  The machines are to help bring financial services close to where people live; and also address digital, economic and social divides, according to the department of Postal and Digital Communications Technologies.

  Deputy Minister of Postal and Digital Communications Technologies, Pinky Kekana said the cashless ATM solution will help decongest the current SASSA grants payment points. “Concerning government regulations to encourage social distancing to curb the spread of Covid-19, the additional 10 000 ATMs access points for social grants payments within the areas in which beneficiaries reside is opportune,” she said.

  The first ATM was installed at Kagiso Trading in Rustenburg, and over 10 000 more are to be set up in spaza shops and other township and rural businesses.

  To use a cashless ATM, a SASSA social grant beneficiary will insert their SASSA card and use the PIN to initiate a transaction, then elect an amount to be debited on the SASSA card. If the debit is successful, the ATM will print out two slips, for merchant and customer, confirming the debit. The customer will hand over the merchant slip to the spaza shop, and in exchange the merchant will give the customer cash or goods to the withdrawal value.

  In addition to accessing social grants, customers will be able to use the cashless ATMs to perform more transactions without the need to withdraw cash. Those include buying prepaid electricity; pre-paid airtime; bill payments for municipality and more; insurance activations and payments; money transfer; ticketing; transport solution, such as the loading of contactless transport cards; and balance enquiries.