Mobile industry lobby group the Association for Comms & Technology (ACT) has filed an application with the high court in Pretoria to have regulations introduced by home affairs minister Leon Schreiber, in which he hiked the fee for accessing the national population register database by as much as 6 500%, overturned.
ACT said on Tuesday that the reason it chose to pursue legal action is that “repeated requests for meaningful engagements and consultation” were not heeded by the minister and his department prior to – and even after the introduction of – the new fee structure.
“The absence of meaningful, transparent and inclusive public consultation constitutes a significant departure from the principles of cooperative governance and accountability enshrined in the constitution and the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act,” said ACT CEO Nomvuyiso Batyi in a statement.
Gazetted in May and enacted on 1 July 2025, the new regulations create a significantly more expensive fee structure for accessing home affairs’ online verification system. The move led to backlash from players in the banking, lending and mobile telecommunications space who rely on access to the database to verify the identity of those who apply for their services.
ACT members are Cell C, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, MTN South Africa, Rain, Vodacom South Africa and Telkom, which are all obliged by Rica legislation to verify the identity of Sim card registrants. It said that by maintaining Rica compliance, its members play a crucial role in mitigating against “egregious” crimes that can occur when Sim cards are obtained by fraudulent means.
Costs
According to ACT, the up-to 6 500% increase in the fee – from 15c to R10 – will have a negative impact on the processes used by telecoms operators to provide their services. Other industries are affected in similar ways.
“This huge increase will make it far more expensive for network operators, banks and other companies to verify their customers’ identities. Ultimately, this will likely push up the cost of essential services for millions of South Africans who are already under financial pressure,” said ACT.
Read: War of words erupts over home affairs database fee hike
ACT said its grounds for challenging Schreiber’s move are:
- The minister’s decision was taken without properly consulting with the affected industries and stakeholders;
- The fee increase is unjustified and baseless, disproportionate, and not rationally connected to the stated objectives or the information before the minister;
- The regulations have a detrimental effect on telecoms, financial services and all industries reliant on consumer identity verification; and
- The absence of a transitional period and the abrupt implementation of the new fees continuously cause irreparable harm to operators and the public.
According to ACT, the review application was shared with the home affairs minister and the department of communications & digital technologies on 13 January. The deadline for the home affairs ministry to file an intention to defend is close of business on Tuesday.
One of the first parties to dispute the fee hike was TymeBank. With no branches of its own, the digital bank relies on its kiosks in retail partner outlets such as Pick n Pay and TFG-branded stores to process customer applications and issue cards. This makes real-time verification critical to its customer acquisition process.
TymeBank co-founder Coen Jonker described move as a “crippling blow” to digital financial inclusion and digital progress in South Africa, adding it was a threat to digital inclusion, digital transformation and national compliance efforts.
“This is not just a policy shift – it’s a regressive tax on the most vulnerable South Africans,” Jonker said in a letter to Schreiber last year.
Schreiber’s spokeswoman, Carli van Wyk, told TechCentral on Tuesday that for more than a decade, taxpayers were unwittingly subsidising the corporate users of the online verification system (OVS) system. She described the previous 15c/query fee as unsustainable, alleging that it allowed these companies to gain access to personal data of belonging to citizens and then “extract enormous profits” from it.
Over and above “depriving home affairs of the resources needed to maintain the OVS system over time”, Van Wyk said this led to the system deteriorating over time, exposing the country to massive risks by crippling the Rica process. From home affairs’ point of view, the changes in fees was a correction to longstanding underpricing.
Read: System offline’ scourge to end, says Schreiber – but industry must pay
“Home affairs welcomes the opportunity to now expose before the courts, in granular detail, how some users came to rely on unsustainably underpriced access to the personal information of South Africans to drive profits under the previous fee structure at public expense. This even included apparently creating intermediaries to on-sell data at a premium, on the basis that the OVS that they had themselves driven to near-collapse through underfunding and abuse was unreliable,” said Van Wyk. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
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