News

South Africa's grant recipients prefer ATMs

June 11, 2012

The Johannesburg, South Africa, suburb of Soweto recently completed a study of residents' preferred methods for receiving government grant money. The study found that whether urban or rural, survey respondents strongly preferred electronic payments.

According to an article at Sowetan Live, South Africa's Social Security Agency now pays out grants in two ways: In the first, a recipient gets a cash payment card and has to do thumb verification. In the second, the beneficiary gets a bankcard that allows him or her to withdraw from the ATM.

Preferences for electronic and cash payments are as follows:

• ?       In urban areas, 70 percent of people use the electronic payment method; 30 percent use cash payment.
• ?       About 63 percent of recipients in peri-urban areas use electronic payment method; 37 percent use the cash payment one.
• ?       In rural areas, 65 percent of grants recipients use the electronic payment; only 35 percent use the cash payment method.

Both categories said they had chosen their method of payment because they "trusted it".

The survey, commissioned by FinMark Trust, was conducted by Progress Research and Development among 1025 households in KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Gauteng between December 2011 and March 2012.

For more on this topic, visit the trends/statistics research center.