Say goodbye to IDs as you know them in South Africa

The government’s plans to introduce a national digital ID system will reshape how identity, services, and data are managed in South Africa.

Described as the most important development in South African identity infrastructure in a generation, these plans were recently gazetted by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and are now open for public comment.

According to iiDENTIFii co-founder and chief strategy officer Lance Fanaroff, the Draft Digital Identity Regulations provide the right foundation for South Africa’s move from physical to digital identity documents.

Gazetted by Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber on 4 May, these regulations seek to amend South Africa’s existing Identification Regulations made under the Identification Act.

The DHA is seeking to support secure digital identity credentials alongside existing physical identity cards.

This, the department said, should strengthen the governance of the population register and regulate related data-sharing and verification arrangements in a manner consistent with the relevant legislation.

According to the DHA, the creation of secure digital identity credentials will enable citizens to store, access, and utilise secure digital versions of their identity documents on their smartphones.

This includes their IDs, birth certificates, marriage certificates and other Home Affairs products, while also giving citizens the ability to remotely confirm their identity using biometric verification.

Fanaroff said the biometric integrity, privacy by design, and a population register as the single source of truth contained in the draft regulations “are precisely the architecture we’ve been working with for years”.

“From an innovation standpoint, the most exciting aspect of the draft regulations is the intent to create an open, interoperable trust framework rather than a single, closed solution,” he said. 

“If the final technical standards and accreditation processes remain transparent and accessible, this could unlock a powerful ecosystem where banks, fintechs, telcos and developers can build new services on top of a common, high‑assurance digital identity layer.” 

“That is how you future‑proof the system and keep South Africa competitive.” Based on the plans already published, Fanaroff believes the proposed framework is “genuinely world-class”.

“The combination of cryptographic credentials, liveness detection standards, tiered identity assurance levels, and POPIA-compliant data sharing puts South Africa ahead of many developed economies,” he said.

These economies, he said, are still debating the principles while South Africa is already implementing them.

Digital inclusion

The DHA has emphasised that these digital IDs will exist alongside the department’s physical products.

“Use of the Digital Identity system will be optional, and physical products like Smart ID cards will continue to exist in parallel to this new digital system,” it said when the regulations were gazetted.

Fanaroff welcomed the draft regulations’ clear focus on putting the consumer front and centre. 

“A digital identity framework that only works for people with the latest smartphones and reliable broadband is not a national identity framework, it’s a framework for the privileged,” he said. 

“The regulations are right to require that no one is unreasonably excluded.”

Schreiber said the digital identity system can greatly enhance South Africa’s ability to combat identity theft, financial crimes, corruption and illegal immigration.

At the same time, he hopes it will enable the department to deliver efficient services to citizens in the comfort of their own homes and improve privacy protections and data management.

“Technical work is well underway, and the finalisation of these regulations will enable us to complete our digital service delivery revolution by bringing services right onto your smart device,” he said.

Fanaroff said identity fraud, in particular, causes real harm to thousands of South Africans each year. 

“Liveness detection, biometric deduplication, and cryptographically signed credentials are not nice-to-haves,” he said. 

“They are the difference between a system that actually protects citizens and one that creates a false sense of security.”