Minister attacks one of South Africa’s largest banks

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber launched a scathing attack on TymeBank after it criticised the pricing of the new National Population Register (NPR) online verification service.

On 24 May 2025, the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) announced that it will roll out the upgraded NPR verification service to all companies and government users from 1 July 2024.

The new online verification service (OVS) represents a significant improvement over the previous system, offering real-time verification with a failure rate of less than 1%.

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.

However, even the off-peak service is much more expensive than the previous price of R0.15 per verification.

A single real-time verification check will now cost R10 per transaction, and non-live batch service requests are R1 each.

“This cost is appropriate for the service provided and is not unreasonable when viewed against the costs charged to clients of the organisations utilising the OVS,” the department said.

Following the DHA’s increased pricing announcement, TymeBank issued a strongly worded open letter to the Home Affairs Minister.

The bank describes the move as a crippling blow to financial inclusion and digital progress in South Africa.

Identity verification services are critical for onboarding customers, ensuring anti-money laundering compliance, and expanding financial services to previously excluded populations.

Tyme Group CEO and co-founder Coenraad Jonker warned that the proposed pricing structure will make it commercially unviable to serve low-income South Africans.

“This is not just a policy shift. It’s a regressive tax on the most vulnerable South Africans,” Jonker said in a statement.

“It undermines the progress towards digital inclusion, weakens the financial sector’s ability to comply with anti-money laundering laws, and risks reversing efforts to exit the FATF greylist.”

He called on the Department of Home Affairs to urgently reverse its decision to implement a 6,500% increase in identity verification fees.

TymeBank also urged national leadership, including the President, the Finance Minister, and the Reserve Bank Governor, to intervene.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber slates TymeBank

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber hit back at TymeBank and Jonker, saying the higher prices are justified considering what happened previously.

The department stated that it has observed instances of excessive use by some institutions, which is attributed to the previously unsustainable low prices it charged for this service.

“The CEO of a Unicorn worth R26,700,000,000 demands that taxpayers struggling to afford food must subsidise it,” Schreiber said.

This, he argued, is because TymeBank refuses to pay more than 15 cents for a service that costs vastly more to provide and that contributes to the system being offline at Home Affairs offices.

“Shocking is the fact that you paid a measly 15 cents for years, relying on taxpayers to subsidise the rest of the actual cost while you profited,” he told TymeBank.

“Shocking is that we have your CEO admitting, in writing, that he never even read our letter inviting public comment.”

Schreiber said that despite Jonker never having read the letter, he approached a political party from the shadows after the comment period closed to try and apply pressure.

The Home Affairs Minister said it was dishonest of Jonker to claim that he was not consulted on the new service and pricing.

“Shocking is trying to prevent Home Affairs from correcting under-pricing to invest in the NPR before it cripples national security,” he said.

“Take your faux outrage somewhere else and stop putting profiteering over people,” Schreiber told Jonker and TymeBank.