The South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) says it has successfully phased out Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) in favour of the South African Post Office (SAPO) for the payment of social grants.

“All 3.16 million [cash] beneficiaries that were serviced by CPS have been migrated to the Post Office and to banks of their choice,” Raphaahle Ramokgopa, executive manager of strategy and business development at Sassa, said during her presentation to Parliament’s social development portfolio committee on Wednesday.

Between April and mid-August, Sassa reduced the number of grant beneficiaries receiving cash at paypoints from about two million to just over 700 000.

This was part of the plan to phase out CPS and eventually decommission most paypoints across the country.

According to Sassa’s presentation, there are about 10.9 million social grant beneficiaries across the country. Of those, 6.7 million were paid through PostBank in October 2018.