Standard Bank's Smart ID push hits 50 branches across SA

When it comes to South African banks that offer Smart ID services at their branches, there’s no question that Capitec is leading the pack with 86 such branches as of April. But there’s no shame in playing for second, is there? Standard Bank today confirmed it had hit a milestone of 50 new bank-assisted Smart ID processing branches.

If the bank is to be believed, it actually reached that milestone a little over a week ago, before April drew to a close. It only told people about ’em today. That’s what we’d say too if we’d missed an internal deadline. It also said that it’s already completed 5,272 applications thus far, with about half of those already in their owner’s hands.

Smart ID comes Standard

“We committed to adding 50 new branches offering the Smart ID service by the end of April, and we have delivered on that promise. The success of this partnership highlights what we can achieve to improve access to services through stronger collaboration between government and business,” says Kabelo Makeke, Chief Head of Personal & Private Banking at Standard Bank South Africa.

Part of the reason why Capitec has surged ahead of all the other banks participating in the Department of Home Affairs’ (DHA) little scheme is owing to its Self-Service Terminals (SSTs) speeding up the process. The others — Standard Bank, Absa, FNB, GoTyme Bank, Discovery Bank, and Nedbank — are putting their employees to work. This requires additional training, significantly stalling the rollout process.

Read More: FNB confirms plans to bring smart ID applications to 240 branches in 2026

It appears to have been worth the wait in Standard Bank’s case. It reckons customers applying for their Smart ID can complete the entire process in roughly eight minutes. After that, it’ll take approximately two weeks before the ID is ready for collection. At this rate, Standard Bank hopes to have as many as 112 such branches before 2027.

“In this initial rollout phase the bank has limited services to its own clients to ensure stability and careful scaling. However, it plans to broaden access in future to reach millions more customers, especially in high-demand areas where Home Affairs capacity is constrained,” it concluded.

You can check out the full list of Standard Bank branches offering Smart ID application services below: