Postbank will start giving out its black cards again in the middle of April. This is part of its plan to replace the gold cards from the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA).
The government said in a statement that by April 5, 2025, about 1.5 million people who get social grants had received black cards.
The rollout will go on until July 2026, starting in mid-April. About 600,000 gold cardholders will be called to switch to Postbank’s black cards so they can keep getting their social grants.
The rollout comes after the Financial Sector Conduct Authority officially gave Postbank the go-ahead to be a Financial Services Provider. The statement said that this is part of the work to turn Postbank into a “sustainable and well-governed state-owned retail bank” after it broke away from the South African Post Office in 2019.
After a cryptographic breach in 2021 that put the security key used to issue SASSA gold cards at risk, the switch to black cards was necessary. The South African Reserve Bank told Postbank in 2021, 2022, and 2023 to replace all SASSA gold cards with the new black cards, which are safer.
But a coordinated rollout didn’t start until 2024, when Postbank started a campaign to switch the cards before the April 2025 deadline. In early 2025, Postbank tried to move millions of beneficiaries, but only about half of them had done so by the deadline.
There was a lot of confusion and deadline changes during the rollout. Many people said the process was too slow and hard. Beneficiaries had to switch quickly, which caused long lines. The rollout had trouble keeping up with demand because of system failures.
At the same time, a number of things have led to a drop in the number of social grant recipients who use Postbank, with many switching to private banks. Figures show that Postbank’s number of customers fell from about 8.2 million in June 2020 to 2 million in June 2025, a drop of 75%.
Customers have had to wait for payments to go through because of cyberattacks and other technical problems since at least 2022.
Over the next few months, Postbank, SASSA, and other government agencies are expected to work together to get in touch with the last few people who are still using the gold card.
