{"id":164723,"date":"2017-03-16T10:26:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T08:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=164723"},"modified":"2017-03-16T10:26:03","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T08:26:03","slug":"grant-provider-used-private-information-to-sell-additional-products-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/164723\/grant-provider-used-private-information-to-sell-additional-products-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Grant provider used private information to sell additional products: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Net 1 used its subsidiary Cash Paymaster Services\u2019 (CPS) social grant contract to obtain grant beneficiaries\u2019 information\u00a0and make\u00a0billions selling loans, insurance and other financial products to South Africa&#8217;s poorest according to\u00a0a new\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/amabhungane.co.za\/article\/2017-03-16-serge-belamant-sassa-and-the-war-chest-of-poor-people\" target=\"_blank\">amaBhungane <\/a><\/strong>report.<\/p>\n<p>The investigative body noted that the contract signed by\u00a0Sassa and\u00a0CPS,\u00a0Net 1 specifically forbid them from using grant beneficiaries\u2019 information for anything other than paying grants.<\/p>\n<p>AmaBhungane reported that other companies within the Net 1 group used the Sassa cards and beneficiary data to access the grant beneficiaries\u2019 Grindrod bank account history and their social grant details<strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This gives Net 1 an information edge over its peers when it lends money or sells insurance and other products, because it can sign up customers with no paperwork and almost zero risk of bad loans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Worse still,\u00a0Net 1 is responsible for most of the R550-million that comes off beneficiaries\u2019 bank accounts for financial services every month, court papers show.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNet 1 has a broad system of getting to the beneficiaries,\u201d he explained. \u201cFor both the [Moneyline] loans and the Smart Life [funeral insurance], we are using a Bio 930 [a Net 1 point of sale device with a fingerprint sensor] where we have to put the beneficiary card, and it has all the information of the beneficiary, said a\u00a0Net 1 salesman speaking to the investigators.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFor the loan, it shows from this machine, how much is he getting. The minute he puts the card and then he has to put his finger, the machine draws a slip which shows how much a person is earning [in social grant income].\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Net 1\u2019s executive chairman Serge Belamant has repeatedly denied similar claims under oath and\u00a0the company has subsequently argued that it provides a valuable service to beneficiaries who are not served by banks.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Read:\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/164511\/sign-a-new-grants-deal-now-or-else-cps-ceo\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sign a new grants deal now, or else we won\u2019t be able to pay: CPS CEO<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Net 1 has reportedly used its subsidiary Cash Paymaster Services\u2019 (CPS) social grant contract to obtain grant beneficiaries\u2019 information to sell additional financial products to South Africa&#8217;s poor. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":164061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[25,11841,4102],"class_list":["post-164723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-active","tag-cash-paymaster-service","tag-net-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164723"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164795,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164723\/revisions\/164795"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}