Massive ID-check price increase at Home Affairs

The Department of Home Affairs will be launching a new upgraded verification system for the national population register (NPR), but companies running real-time checks should prepare to cough up.

The DHA has provided the service known as the online verification system (OVS) to third-parties that connects them to the NPR since 2013.

This service allows registered users like banks and financial service providers to check identities and other biographical information of their clients against the Home Affairs database.

According to the department, these users have been paying 15 cents for real-time verifications against the NPR—a price point that has not changed since launch.

However, from 1 July, a single real-time verification check will now rise sharply to R10 per transaction.

To compensate for the steep increase, the system will allow non-live batch verifications—where a user can verify multiple records simultaneously during off-peak periods—at a cost of R1 per verification field request, it said.

The DHA previously gazetted a change in these fees in March 2025 to take effect from 1 April. However, the gazette was withdrawn and republished with a comment period opened.

According to DHA minister Leon Schreiber, the pervious 15 cent rate was staggeringly below market-related prices charged by the provate sector for comparable services.

It was also far below the cost to the state for providing the service, depriving the department of the resources it needed to maintain the NPR.

“Extreme under-pricing has led to profiteering and abuses by some users that overwhelm the NPR and cause failure rates in excess of 50%, contributing to ‘system offline’ failures at Home Affairs offices and threatening national security,” the department said.

While the new pricing is a massive increase from previous fees, the department said that it reflects the value of the upgraded NPR verification system.

Why the changes are needed

Since its rollout more than a decade ago at “inappropriately low cost” to users, the demands on the OVS have far outstripped the capacity at which it was originally designed, the department said.

Since then, there has been no substantive upgrade to the system, while demand and the costs of maintaining the infrastructure increased year-on-year.

Due to the upgrade stasis and the increased demands placed on the OVS by institutions—and exorbitant over-use by some institutions owing to unsustainably low prices—users now experience a staggering failure rate in excess of 50% on verification checks against the NPR.

“Even in the case of successful verifications, response times often take hours, thereby defeating the purpose of real-time verification,” the department said.

Both of these factors are directly undermining services that require such verifications, including through the OVS and at Home Affairs offices.

The upgraded system, which will be rolling out from 1 July, now delivers what it was designed to do.

“It now performs in real-time and the failure rate has been reduced to below 1%,” the DHA said.

For the first time, the new system will also introduce an option for users to do “non-live batch verifications” during off-peak hours at a significantly lower fee than real-time verifications.

“This will offer both a cost-effective alternative to real-time verifications and incentivise users to stop overloading the OVS’ live queue, reducing the problem of ‘system offline’ at frontline Home Affairs offices,” the department said.

Regarding the sharp increase in costs, the department said that the new fees are appropriate for the service provided, and not unreasonable when viewed against the costs charged to clients of the organisations utilising the OVS.

Importantly, there will continue to be no charge for the use of this service by other government departments.

Schreiber said a healthy and functioning NPR is also a prerequisite for a functional Digital ID, which the department aims to roll out.

“The NPR must become the central database against which identities are verified as Home Affairs becomes a digital-first department,” he said.