The Department of Home Affairs has signed up with Capitec and FNB to deliver smart identity (ID) cards and passport services from the existing 30 to hundreds more bank branches across the country.
In a media statement released on Monday, Duwayne Esau, the spokesperson for Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber, said the new initiative with the two commercial banks will widen access to people in urban and rural areas in South Africa.
Esau said the new digital partnership model will also expand access to smart ID and passport services to digital banking applications.
“In fulfilment of the target set by Cabinet in the medium-term development plan, which tasks Home Affairs with expanding its services to 1 000 bank branches by 2029, the director-general of the department, Mr Tommy Makhode, on 30 April 2025 wrote to
the CEOs of Absa, African Bank, TymeBank, Capitec, Discovery Bank, FNB, Investec Bank, Nedbank, and Standard Bank, inviting them to join this transformative, digital-first new phase of the department’s existing collaboration with the banking sector.
“This collaboration dates back more than a decade and has, until now, seen the successful delivery of smart ID and passport services at only 30 branches across five different banks.
“However, that original model relied on the costly duplication of Home Affairs staff and
hardware inside bank branches, and failed to take advantage of technology to dramatically expand services into all rural and urban areas where bank branches already exist, as well as onto secure banking apps that have come to be widely used across society,” said Esau.
Critical milestone
Esau said Schreiber will visit Capitec and FNB this week to provide further information on how this new initiative will benefit South Africans.
“It marks the beginning of the end for long travelling distances to reach Home Affairs services and 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,” said Esau.
He said the department further reiterates its call for all other banks to similarly take up the
invitation to work together, to ensure that all South Africans have access to smart IDs
and passport services in their communities.
“This reform marks a critical milestone on our journey to unlock the power of digital
transformation to deliver Home Affairs@home,” said Esau.
Schreiber will visit Capitec at its head offices in Stellenbosch, Western Cape, on Tuesday. He will visit FNB at its offices in Cape Town on Wednesday.
