The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) has announced that grant beneficiaries using Sassa Gold Cards will not be able to collect their December 2022 grant payments at ATMs this month.
The agency said grant beneficiaries will still be able to collect them at retail outlets including Boxer, Shoprite Checkers, Pick n Pay and Usave stores around the country.
“Sassa grant beneficiaries using the Postbank Issued gold cars are requested to withdraw their benefits from retail merchants,” explained the agency.
The Postbank has experienced several technical glitches in recent months. These technical glitches resulted in challenges being experienced by grant beneficiaries when collecting their money.
In investigating the cause of these technical glitches, they uncovered a series of network attacks by criminal elements determined to commit systematic ATM card fraud-related crimes on Postbank payments.
They added that this was done using sophisticated methods that require further investigation.
Sassa says it has therefore become necessary that Postbank suspends Sassa grants withdrawal at ATMs for beneficiaries using the Postbank-issued Sassa gold cards to mitigate the risk of these network attacks.
"We assure our customers that a dedicated team of professionals, assisted by experienced external experts as well as law enforcement agencies, has been assigned to deal with this challenge, and great progress has been made to close down all avenues used by these criminals," declared Sassa.
The agency assured grant beneficiaries that their Sassa gold cards remain valid and have not expired. They said beneficiaries must not be misled into changing the cards unless they wish to do so on their own accord as it is not necessary to change their cards.
Grant beneficiaries will be notified when ATM transactions are available again.
