Zuko Komisa

The Department of Home Affairs is set to launch a significantly upgraded National Population Register (NPR) verification service on July 1, 2025, aimed at providing faster and more reliable identity verification for businesses and government entities.
Announced by Home Affairs Minister, Dr. Leon Schreiber, the enhanced service will replace the outdated Online Verification System (OVS), which has suffered from high failure rates and slow response times due to a decade of under-investment and excessive demand.
Currently, the OVS, initially designed at low capacity, experiences a failure rate exceeding 50%, with verifications often taking hours.
“Under-investment and overloading of the OVS is a key factor behind the challenge of having ‘offline systems’ at frontline offices,” the department stated, highlighting the direct threat an unreliable NPR poses to national security and service delivery.
🇿🇦 In rebuilding the National Population Register (NPR), Home Affairs is putting the people over shameless profiteering.
— Leon Schreiber (@Leon_Schreib) June 24, 2025
I want to thank various stakeholders – from banks and financial service companies to Cosatu – that have recognised the urgent need to fix the NPR. The service…
The department also noted that the previously low fee of R0.15 per verification incentivized “exorbitant over-use” by some institutions, contributing to system overload and poor performance.
The new OVS promises real-time verification with a failure rate reduced to below 1%. Additionally, it will introduce a new “non-live batch verification” option for off-peak hours at a significantly lower fee, encouraging users to reduce strain on the live system.
To support the upgrade and ongoing maintenance, the fee for a single real-time verification will increase to R10 per transaction. Non-live batch verifications will cost R1 per verification field request. Government departments will continue to use the service free of charge. These tariff adjustments follow extensive public consultation and concurrence from the Minister of Finance.
Organizations wishing to connect to the new OVS can email [email protected]. The new fee schedule is available on the Home Affairs website.
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