The official payment of R350 grants began on Wednesday with SASSA paying about 6000 recipients. By the end of Thursday, they hope to have paid 250 000 people.

By next Tuesday, the organization hopes to have paid 2 million people.

Paseka Letsatsi, a spokesperson for SASSA, stated:

We are trying to make sure that we gradually take the numbers up. We also want to make sure that the system does not necessarily crash.

The payment process is still ongoing, and additional grants will be paid out in the coming days, so beneficiaries who have not yet received any payments need not be concerned.

If you have not provided SASSA with your bank information, you will receive your grant through the Post Office. Before going to the Post Office that is closest to them, beneficiaries should wait for an SMS letting them know they can get their grant.

In order to ensure that only a select group of beneficiaries will visit Post Offices to collect their grants, SASSA sends a predetermined number of SMSs to them. During the pandemic, this is done to avoid long lines and overcrowding.

What we have tried to make sure with the payment, especially people who are going to get the payment at the Post Office, does not clash with people who are not getting your normal grant so that we do not have as many people as possible going there.

Nearly 10 million R350 grant applications have been submitted to SASSA thus far. Men make up 49% of applicants.