The SA Post Office experience technical delays with SASSA social grants payment since Friday morning.
According to the entity beneficiaries were informed of a technical difficulties it has been experiencing since the early hours of Friday morning with its payments system.
“We apologize to all the affected social grants beneficiaries for the inconvenience,
“Our IT technicians have been on site working on resolving this matter. While the SASSA social grants payments system has now stabilized, we remain alert because the volume of transaction requests is now high and this may impact the system’s performance for the remainder of the day,’ said Mr Hannes van der Merwe, acting managing director: Postbank.
The system error caused the timing out of a number of SASSA social grants withdrawals at ATM’s and some retail merchants.
According to the post office the timing out of the transactions also affected several branches but this was soon resolved.
The timing out of transactions occurs when, for example, the customer inserts the card inside the ATM requesting a withdrawal but the system would take too long to respond and only returns the card and a receipt indicating the timeout error code (error 68).
In a number of these incidents unfortunately, customers’ accounts would be automatically debited with the amount of money they intended to withdraw without having been dispensed with the cash by the ATM.
“Postbank is currently effecting the auto reversals of the funds affecting all the accounts erroneously debited in this manner. The funds will all be available tomorrow and all the affected social grants beneficiaries are urged not to despair but resume their transactions a day later (Saturday, 2 November),” said the entity in a statement.
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