BotswanaPost has announced plans to fully terminate use of a voucher system to make payments to beneficiaries of government's socio-economic safety nets.
Lebogang Bok, head of strategy and communications at BotswanaPost said the changing communications landscape has pushed the institution to leverage technology and strategic partnerships to deliver first class service.
"BotswanaPost found it necessary to switch from the voucher system to the card payment as the production, reconciliation and distribution of the voucher system is lengthy and therefore costly," Bok said adding that use of vouchers would stop in April.
Dubbed PosoCard electronic payment system, the new services was piloted during the last half of 2014 and BotswanaPost indicate that 90% of socio-economic safety net beneficiaries have registered to use the facility.
"With time, the figures will change, as the Post target 100% of beneficiaries to be registered by end of March 2015," Bok said.
PosoCard allows beneficiaries to access their social benefit throughout the country and use multiple payment channels, such as Post Offices, cash pay-points and selected merchant stores.
The system uses fingerprint biometric identification to authenticate users. A fingerprint is scanned and matched against the PosoCard database in order to ensure the identity of the user.
This verification process has to happen before any transactions take place.
Botswana provides allowances through the department of Social Protection for pensioners, war veterans and the destitute.
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