Home Affairs Raises Fees: Increased Costs for Online ID and Biographical Information Verification

Johannesburg – The Department of Home Affairs has raised the fees for its verification service.

On Monday, 23 June 2025, the department announced the fee adjustment, stating: “Following significant upgrades to the service, Home Affairs has today published a new price structure.”

The new cost-reflective fee for real-time verifications is set at R10 during peak hours, with a low-cost option for batch transactions available at R1 during off-peak hours.

To explain the reasons for these fee adjustments, the department highlighted the need to address the “unsustainable under-pricing” of its verification service.

For more than a decade, banks and financial service providers have only been charged R0.15 for real-time verifications against the National Population Register (NPR).

“This rate is significantly lower than market-related rates for similar services in the private sector and well below the actual costs incurred by the State to maintain the online verification service (OVS), depriving Home Affairs of the necessary resources to manage the NPR,” the department clarified.

“Severe under-pricing has fostered profiteering and misuse by certain users, overwhelming the NPR and resulting in failure rates above 50%, which contributes to system failures at Home Affairs offices and jeopardizes national security.”

Home Affairs Minister Dr. Leon Schreiber urged users to prioritize national security over short-term profit motives.

Minister Schreiber announced that, following a successful pilot and further enhancements, Home Affairs will launch an upgraded NPR verification service for all companies and government users on 1 July 2025, ensuring fast and reliable identity verification.

This enhanced service aims to boost service delivery from government departments and encourage financial inclusion in the private sector, alongside appropriate tariff increases validated by extensive public consultation and approval from the Minister of Finance.

Since 2013, Home Affairs has provided the Online Verification System (OVS) to third parties connected to the NPR, allowing registered users to verify their clients’ identities and biographical information against the Home Affairs database.

“However, since its launch over a decade ago at an unreasonably low rate, demand for OVS has outstripped its original design capacity,” the department noted.

“There have been no significant upgrades to the system since, while demand and infrastructure maintenance costs have risen yearly.”

“This stagnation in upgrades and the increased demands, along with excessive usage by some institutions due to unsustainably low prices, have led to a staggering failure rate of over 50% for verification checks against the NPR.”

The department indicated that even successful verifications often take hours, undermining the very purpose of real-time verification.

“Both issues directly hinder services requiring such verifications, whether through the OVS or in Home Affairs offices,” the department remarked.

“In reality, insufficient investment and overload on the OVS contribute to the ‘system offline’ challenges at frontline offices.

“Furthermore, an unreliable NPR poses a direct risk to national security as it hampers the State’s ability to verify identities.

“The low fees for this service, as minimal as R0.15 per verification, have stripped the State of the essential resources needed to maintain and upgrade the NPR.”

The department highlighted that some private sector users of the OVS have taken advantage of this artificially low price to increase their corporate profits at the public’s expense, overwhelming the NPR with requests and regularly resulting in failure rates over 50%.

“Some users have exploited the system’s unreliability, caused by their excessive usage, to establish third-party verification services that charge significantly higher rates than those paid to Home Affairs,” the department reported.

“This unsustainable cycle must be broken.

“The artificially low pricing structure has led to such critical under-investment in the NPR that it now threatens financial inclusion, the government’s capability to combat identity and financial crime, and national security.”

“Home Affairs is bringing this cycle to an end.”

The department announced that from 1 July 2025, the new OVS will be available to all users.

The upgraded OVS represents a modernized, streamlined system that performs as intended.

It now operates in real-time, with a failure rate reduced to under 1%.

“For the first time, the new system will also provide users the option for ‘non-live batch verifications’ during off-peak hours at a significantly lower fee than real-time verifications,” the department stated.

“This will offer a cost-effective alternative to real-time verifications and encourage users to reduce the strain on the OVS’s live queue, alleviating the ‘system offline’ issues at Home Affairs offices.

“Consequently, and for the first time in over a decade, Home Affairs has set the fees for a single real-time verification check to R10 per transaction.”

For non-live batch verifications, users wishing to verify multiple records during off-peak periods will pay R1 per verification field request.

There remains no charge for this service for other government departments.

Minister Leon Schreiber declared, “This is fundamentally a matter of national security.

“Every responsible State must take necessary measures to ensure a functioning population register.”

The minister stated that this upgrade also fosters financial inclusion and significantly aids South Africa’s efforts to exit the Financial Action Task Force’s grey list.

“I extend my gratitude to the many stakeholders who supported this vital reform during our public consultations, and I urge all OVS users to prioritize national security over short-term profit,” said Minister Schreiber.

“A robust NPR is crucial for a functional Digital ID, as it will serve as the central database for identity verification during Home Affairs’ transition to a digital-first department.

“Investing in the NPR is an investment in national security, financial inclusion, and the integrity of our valued South African identity, yielding significant benefits for our nation.”

*Organizations interested in connecting to the new OVS should email: Verifications@dha.gov.za.

A copy of the gazette with the new fee schedule can be accessed here.