Home affairs faces backlash over ID database fee surge

The Association of Comms & Technology (ACT) has challenged a move by the department of home affairs to increase the price businesses pay to access the national identity system for verifications by 150% – allegedly without proper consultation.

The Home Affairs National Information System (Hanis) and its replacement, the Automated Biometric Identity System (Abis), are critical to the proper functioning of the economy as they allow institutions such as banks, insurance companies and telecommunications operators to verify clients’ identities. This verification is required by the industries’ respective regulators, and a big hike to the fees levied by home affairs would drive up the cost of doing business.

Hanis is typically used when citizens apply for bank accounts, Sim cards and other services. The proposed changes would see the cost for a single query to the central national database rise from R4 to R10.

“From what we understand, they want to overhaul their systems, and the easiest way to recover costs seems to be through Hanis,” ACT CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi said in a recent interview with TechCentral. ACT is an industry lobby group representing six of the largest network operators in South Africa.

“We have reached out to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) and the Banking Association of South Africa (Basa) to say this is not fair. Home affairs must perform their due diligence and not increase prices so drastically overnight.”

According to Batyi, home affairs wanted to increase the fees without proper consultation with the public or the relevant industry stakeholders.

An explanation justifying the price increase and an economic impact study to investigate its impact on industries that rely on Hanis for their operations were also not done, she said, adding that the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act requires a “fair and rational process” in circumstances like this one.

‘Draft’

TechCentral research found that home affairs minister Leon Schreiber first gazetted draft amendment regulations to the Identification Act – the legislation that governs the pricing for Hanis – on 24 March. Following some pointed questions by ACT, an updated gazette on 31 March appeared to have resulted in the nullification of the first version. The new one tabled the same amendments, only this time labelling the changes as “draft” and inviting comment from the public in the form of written submissions.

The deadline for submissions was 30 April.

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According to ACT, subsequent discussions with home affairs revealed that, other than recouping financial costs, the department views the price increase as a way to deter companies from abusing the identity verification system, which apparently sometimes leads to system lag and even downtime.

Batyi said if the problem is abuse, it must be defined properly so that other ways to deal with it can be explored. ACT was also critical of the size of the proposed price increase.

“Large increases must have a glide path instead of shocking the system in the way they intend to,” she said.

Batyi warned that that if the price increase is introduced, it could lead to businesses that are reliant on access to Abis and Hanis reducing their statutory duties to check customers’ identities due to prohibitive costs. For the telecoms sector, such behaviour could lead to further circumvention of the Rica Act, which governs Sim card registration designed to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to fight crime.

According to Batyi, the lack of transparency by home affairs regarding the model that informed its proposed new pricing structure has opened the door to speculation. If businesses don’t know what they are paying for, they could assume home affairs is using the banking, insurance and telecoms sectors to fund the planned overhaul its digital systems.

President Cyril Ramaphosa in February announced a raft of sweeping planned digital reforms at home affairs, including the implementation of digital IDs that will form the cornerstone of government’s digital overhaul.

Home affairs in March announced it had overhauled Abis and reduced system downtime to below 1%. TechCentral asked the department for comment as well as clarification on issues regarding Abis, Hanis and the proposed amendments to the Identification Act, but no response has been received by the time of publication.

“If you read that gazette, it is empty, you cannot gauge anything meaningful except the price. We need to understand the impact of the regulations on the industry and explore various options before prices are hiked,” said Batyi.  – © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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