Goodbye green ID books – big changes for Smart ID and passports in South Africa

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber says his department aims to significantly improve Smart ID and Passport services this year. The plan is to stop issuing the old green IDs by year-end.

Delivering his budget vote address on Tuesday (8 July), Schreiber said the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) has already hit several milestones on its ambitions to make South Africa’s IDs and Passports more secure and accessible.

He noted that, through focused processing, the department has delivered almost 3.6 million Smart IDs in the most recent financial year, beating previous annual records.

It has also opened up the Smart ID application process to naturalised citizens and permanent residents, expanding the rollout to all those who qualify.

He said that in line with the Medium-Term Development Plan adopted by Cabinet, the DHA will use the 2025/26 financial year to rapidly scale up access to the Smart ID.

This will include expanding the “already successful” pilot project to deliver Smart ID and passport services to more bank branches in the country.

“We will use digital transformation to integrate the Home Affairs IT platform onto banks’ networks, thereby enabling many more bank branches to deliver this service around the country,” Schreiber said.

“Our target for this financial year is to expand this service to at least 100 more branches.”

He added that the same technology will eventually enable South Africans to order Smart IDs and passports through their banking app, “just like they already do when buying electricity or data.”

Further down the line, the department will introduce the option of home delivery for Smart IDs and passports, using advanced facial recognition technology to secure the process.

The minister said that the sharp focus on the Smart ID rollout is to make South Africa less reliant on the green ID books, which are 500% more vulnerable than the Smart ID.

Green ID book days are numbered

Schreiber said that over 100 existing Home Affairs branches in South Africa are still not equipped and capable of issuing Smart IDs.

“As we speak, these offices are still issuing the Green ID book that is at the heart of the scourge of identity theft and fraud our country is facing,” he said.

“If we have to wait for the funding to be made available to modernise all these offices, we’ll be waiting forever. So we will not wait.”

The minister said that scaling up the existing collaboration with South Africa’s banks will enable the department to rapidly accelerate access to Smart IDs.

This is why it has the longer-term goal of having the capability at 1,000 branches over the next three years.

For 2025, the aim is to end the production of new green ID books by the end of the year.

“This will be a momentous step towards delivering dignity for all, while simultaneously clamping down on fraud,” he said.

While the minister has a strong focus on Smart ID access in South Africa, his ambitions also extend to other countries.

He announced that the issuing of Smart IDs will be expanding even further in July, with new facilities opening in other countries to assist South Africans living abroad.

Schreiber said that South Africans living abroad sometimes have to wait a year or more to get a new Smart ID or passport, but the new facilities will accomplish this in five weeks.

“We are starting in Australia, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates, followed by France, Germany and the Netherlands later this year, and North America in the new year,” he said.

All of these plans and processes are a step toward the department’s true aim of developing a fully digital ID system, which works across sectors, from government services to private sector services like banking.

He said the DHA will soon submit a Digital ID policy to cabinet for approval to conduct public hearings.