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The main purpose of the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is to provide financial aid to eligible students. However, students have faced several challenges related to the disbursement of their NSFAS allowances.
At the moment, NSFAS pays student allowances through the institutions they are registered with and some institutions use a cellphone-based voucher system in which they pay students.
These methods have often resulted in the date which students receive their allowances being uncertain, as well as their allowance not being paid on time.
To address this, NSFAS has embarked on a drive to move beneficiaries onto the new allowance payment method, with the plan of rolling it out to all beneficiaries in 2023.
Speaking at the media briefing on the 2023 application season, Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande announced that his Department and NSFAS will be piloting a direct payment method to students through a bank card system called the “NSFAS Mastercard”.
“There have been issues with the current methods, such as unauthorised access to beneficiary allowances and lack of physical verification leading to possible payments to fictitious/ghost beneficiaries, incorrect payments and possible duplicate payments,” Nzimande said.
To correct this situation, NSFAS worked on an alternative and secure plan which will see students receiving their allowances through a bank card.
NSFAS sought an alternative, secure and student-centered approach which will see students receiving their allowances through a bank card.
The scheme plans to pilot this solution with a number of students first, and the full roll-out will occur in a phased approach.
This Mastercard will operate much like a standard bank card and students will be able to use it to make transaction anywhere a normal bank card would.
To develop the Mastercard, NSFAS partnered with four banks: eZaga, Tenetech, Norraco, and Coinvest to set it up.
Students have been encouraged to keep watching the NSFAS social media platforms, as they will be making announcements on where the banks will be located
