SA’s largest bank by assets, Standard Bank, has joined First National Bank and Capitec in supporting the department of home affairs’ initiative to use banks to provide Smart ID and passport services at branches and on digital banking apps.
Home affairs minister Leon Schreiber announced the inclusion of Standard Bank in the department’s new digital partnership model on X on Tuesday.
The department says the inclusion of additional banks will expand the service from the existing 30 bank branches to hundreds more bank branches in both urban and rural areas. The cabinet set a target in the medium-term development plan for the department to expand its services to 1,000 bank branches by 2029.
Standard Bank said in a statement that more details on participating Standard Bank branches and digital service rollouts would be released in the coming months. The bank has provided such services in nine branches and plans to scale up the offering across the country.
The bank's CEO of personal and private banking, Funeka Montjane, said the collaboration with the department of home affairs would save the bank’s clients time and make it easier to access essential identity services.
Home affairs director-general Tommy Makhode had written to the CEOs of Absa, African Bank, TymeBank, Capitec Bank, Discovery Bank, First National Bank, Investec Bank, Nedbank and Standard Bank at the end of April, inviting them to join the new phase of the department’s existing collaboration with the banking sector.
The collaboration dates back more than a decade but has been limited to only 30 bank branches across five different banks.
The department said in a statement this week the original model relied on the costly duplication of home affairs staff and hardware inside bank branches and failed to take advantage of technology.
The department said the initiative “marks the beginning of the end for long travelling distances to reach home affairs services, for long queues, as well as for the green ID book with its unacceptable vulnerability to fraud and identity theft, and the next step in the new digital-first era of public service delivery that the government of national unity is building.”
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