Good news for everyone with a driver’s licence in South Africa

South Africa is working on a plan to introduce digital driver’s licences, which could eliminate the need to renew physical cards altogether.

Motorists have become increasingly frustrated with South Africa’s current driver’s licence system in recent years, involving time-consuming renewals at Driver’s Licence Testing Centres.

The country is reliant on a single, ageing licence card printing machine that has broken down on several occasions, leading to months-long backlogs.

The last time this happened was in February 2025, resulting in a backlog of over 750,000 renewal applications that wasn’t resolved until January 2026.

The Department of Transport (DoT) attempted to procure a new printer to replace the dated model, but this process led to a controversial tender that was investigated by the Auditor-General of South Africa.

The Auditor-General uncovered multiple discrepancies in the tender, including a budget that had ballooned from R486 million to R899 million, and the fact that the winning bidder, Idemia, failed to meet key technical requirements.

Consequently, the Pretoria High Court handed down a declaratory order to set aside the tender in January 2026. Half a year later, South Africa is still reliant on its sole, unreliable printer.

While this problem persists, the DoT is slowly making progress on two fronts. Firstly, it is working on extending the validity period of South Africa’s physical driver’s licence cards from five to eight years.

Secondly, it is developing a new digital driver’s licence card tied to a smartphone app, making it easier to access a variety of government services.

Digital driver’s licences in the works for South Africa

In late 2025, Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Solly Malatsi, gave a live demonstration of how South Africa’s new digital driver’s licences will work.

The licence can be accessed via the MyMzanzi smartphone app, which the government intends to expand across multiple services.

The digital licence features all of the credentials of a typical card, including the individual’s names, car number, and vehicle licence category.

The licence itself is accessed by opening the app’s digital wallet. From there, motorists can check to see if there are any outstanding traffic fines linked to their profile.

They can also select an option to renew their digital licence, which takes them to a form where they must fill out their full name, ID number, and contact information.

A security measure requires users to digitally sign the form and take a photo of themselves for verification purposes.

Once all of this is done, the user is taken to a payment page where they can submit their details and pay the fee through a secure portal.

During the demonstration, the app showed a list of accepted payment options, including debit and credit cards from Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

It also supported Apple Pay, though since the demo was conducted on an iPhone, it’s unclear whether the app will support other e-wallets at launch.

When it comes to using the licence, motorists can produce a QR code on their phone, which can be presented to traffic officers to scan just like the back of a physical card.

Malatsi claimed that the new driver’s licence will also help to crack down on fraud and corruption, as the card is digitally verified.

“Indeed, it works, and the South African legend of being asked for a cold drink on the spot will not prevail in this regard because it will be digitally verified that your licence is in compliance,” he said.

One concern with the digital cards is whether the service will be reliable, or if it will be suspecible to outages.

Additionally, while smartphone adoption has become widespread in South Africa, many communities still lack strong network coverage.

World Wide Worx CEO and technology sector analyst Arthur Goldstuck said that a digital licence service