New era for Smart IDs as Capitec and FNB expand services nationwide

Source: Gauteng Tourism Authority.

It will further expand these services to digital-banking applications.

The Director-General of Home Affairs, Tommy Makhode, wrote to the chief executive officers of nine major banks on 30 April 2025, inviting them to join the next digital-first phase of the department’s collaboration with the banking sector.

This initiative, aligned with the Cabinet’s Medium-Term Development Plan target of expanding Home Affairs services to 1,000 bank branches by 2029, aims to significantly broaden public access.

It said the 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.

The 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.

Bringing services closer

The department said the new partnerships signalled the beginning of the end for long travel distances to access Home Affairs services, lengthy queues, and the Green ID book, which is highly vulnerable to fraud and identity theft.

It is also the next step in the new digital-first era of public service delivery that the Government of National Unity is building, said the department.

The Minister will visit Capitec and FNB this week to provide further information on how this reform will benefit all South Africans. On Tuesday, 12 August 2025 the Minister will visit Capitec head office in Stellenbosch and then on Wednesday he will visit FNB at the Portside Tower, in Cape Town.

“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 ID and passport services in their own communities," he said.