The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has apologised to beneficiaries using gold cards after they were unable to withdraw their grants at post offices.
This comes as South African Post Office (Sapo) outlets experienced glitches in their systems affecting all Postbank customers wishing to make over over-the-counter payments, deposits and withdrawals.
“Withdrawals of social grants can be made at any retail outlets nationwide that provide the cash-back functionality, which includes Shoprite, Checkers, Usave, Pick n Pay, and Boxer,” Postbank said in a statement.
“South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) grant recipients can also use the Sassa gold cards to make purchases at any place that accepts bank card transactions as the Sassa gold cards functions fully within the national payment systems system similarly to any other bank card.”
Postbank interim CEO Lucas Ndala apologised to the grant recipients for the inconvenience.
“Our IT teams have been tasked to resolve the technical challenges affecting the over-the-counter branch transactions as a matter of urgency. All customers are advised to utilise retailers at ATMs as alternatives while we are working on retaining full services availability within Post office branches,” Ndala said.
“We apologise to Sassa grants beneficiaries and Postbank customers for the inconvenience caused as we take every service interruption seriously,” Ndala added.
He said Postbank would send out a notification when the matter was resolved.
Acting Sassa CEO Abraham Mahlangu said: “Sassa uses a fully functional bank card that is compatible with all access points within the national payment system, thereby limiting the impact on clients when the system of one bank, merchant or pay point is down.”
Source: Times Live, IOL, News24, image from Twitter: @eNCA