{"id":43371,"date":"2013-08-04T23:01:29","date_gmt":"2013-08-04T21:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=43371"},"modified":"2013-08-05T09:00:08","modified_gmt":"2013-08-05T07:00:08","slug":"absa-closing-social-grants-company-allpay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/43371\/absa-closing-social-grants-company-allpay\/","title":{"rendered":"Absa closing social grants company AllPay?"},"content":{"rendered":"

AllPay Consolidated\u00a0Investment Holdings<\/a>, Absa<\/a>\u2019s division responsible for paying social grants, is set to close following the loss of the social grant payment contract in early 2012.<\/p>\n

Listed company,\u00a0Net1 UEPS Technologies<\/a>, a provider of alternative payment systems,\u00a0through its subsidiary, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), was awarded a R10 billion contract by the\u00a0SA Social Security Agency (Sassa<\/a>)\u00a0in January 2012.<\/p>\n

However, rival bidder AllPay claimed the process to be illegal and invalid citing corruption.<\/p>\n

In August 2012,\u00a0the North Gauteng High Court ruled that the tender process for the Sassa contract was improper,\u00a0after AllPay voiced its concerns about the process.<\/p>\n

At the end of March 2013, Net1 said\u00a0that a full bench of the South African Supreme Court of\u00a0Appeal unanimously ruled that the tender process followed by Sassa\u00a0in awarding a contract to CPS\u00a0was\u00a0valid and legal.<\/p>\n

In April,\u00a0AllPay filed leave to appeal with the South African Constitutional Court against the judgment handed down in March.<\/p>\n

Last week (30 July), in\u00a0reporting interim results for the period June 2013, Absa said of AllPay:\u00a0“The business continues to be wound down following the loss of the social grant payment contract in early 2012.”<\/p>\n

The bank declined to comment any further, noting that it is subject to the Constitutional Court appeal.<\/p>\n

“AllPay has appealed the decision of the Supreme Court to uphold the awarding of the social grants contract to another party. This appeal is scheduled to be heard in the Constitutional Court in the second half of the year (September),” Absa said.<\/p>\n

AllPay weighed on Absa’s interim headline earnings accounting for a percentage loss of 0.8%, compared to a 2.8% positive contribution in June 2012.<\/p>\n

AllPay accounted for 1.3% of Absa’s overall revenue in the 2012 reporting period.<\/p>\n

Retail Banking\u2019s net fee and commission income declined 3% to R5.1 billion, reflecting changing customer behaviour, price changes, customer attrition and AllPay\u2019s lower contribution, the bank said.<\/p>\n

The group saw a decline in transactional customer numbers from 9.7 million to 9.4 million during the reporting period.<\/p>\n

More on Absa and AllPay<\/h3>\n

Absa\u2019s Allpay heads to the constitutional court<\/a>“<\/strong><\/p>\n

Absa, Net1 battle isn\u2019t over<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Net1 wins supreme court case over Absa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Court grants leave to appeal in Sassa case<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Net1 set for legal action against AllPay<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Absa’s AllPay is set to close following the loss of the social grant payment contract in early 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":363,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[29,4104,26,4774,785],"class_list":["post-43371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-absa","tag-allpay","tag-headline","tag-net1-ueps-technologies","tag-sassa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43371","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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43371"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43371\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43650,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43371\/revisions\/43650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}