Questions over South Africa’s third-party vehicle licensing and fine payments

South Africa’s practice of outsourcing traffic fine payments to third-party platforms should be stopped.

This is according to Rob Handfield-Jones, the Driving.co.za managing director, who noted that the practice is bizarre and has worsened traffic problems in the country.

“The moment a profit incentive is introduced into anything, profit becomes the goal, not results,” he said.

“The issue of fake fine websites is the inevitable outcome of the State allowing the private sector to become involved in law enforcement.”

He questioned why the government’s legal processes, such as payments and vehicle licence renewals, rely on banks, private websites, or third-party contractors.

Rob Handfield-Jones also stated that this framework is “absurd” as the Department of Transport already has an e-Natis website.

“It should insist that the portal becomes the sole way to renew a vehicle or driving licence or pay a fine online,” said Handfield-Jones.

“No more third-party providers. The provision of third-party access to eNatis should be strictly limited to a need-to-have basis, like private roadworthy testing stations and vehicle finance companies.”

The eNatis, notably, allows motorists to renew vehicle or driving licences but does not currently support traffic fine payments.

Should the department eliminate third-party payments, it would need to upgrade the eNatis platform.

Handfield-Jones also noted that the current situation is like if multiple competing platforms offered the ability to renew your smart ID card online, putting the eHomeAffairs platform in a strange position.

“Government would never allow that. So why is it permissible for roads and traffic, which, unlike ID cards, kill 12,000+ people a year?” he said.

His concerns were echoed by criminal defence attorney William Booth, who warned that using third-party platforms to pay traffic fines was risky, chiefly due to questions over site legitimacy and data reliability.

He explained that due to a desire to make a profit, many of these third-party platforms try to get motorists to pay as quickly as possible, as they’ll likely get a commission.

This can lead to errors and mistakes on the part of the platform.

Warnings over third-party payment platforms

Motorists must also be careful of third-party payment platforms, as many fraudsters are impersonating legitimate sites in the hopes of scamming unsuspecting drivers out of their money.

“I think the problem these days is we all get notifications from all kinds of sources, and most of them are actually bogus,” said Booth.

“The problem with all these fine sites is that they may or may not be bogus, and they may or may not be correct.”

Booth noted that any of these sites could claim that a motorist has an outstanding fine, but this could be the result of a person responsible for that information making a mistake.

“It turns out that you don’t have the fines, and whoever posted it there got it wrong,” he said.

“They may even add up a higher fine than what you are actually supposed to be paying. The message is to be careful about this because it might not be correct, and you end up paying money you don’t have to.”

PayCity also recently warned about phishing scams targeting motorists with fake traffic fine notifications.

It explained that this involved fraudsters sending fake traffic fine notification messages pretending to impersonate PayCity, often with fraudulent payment links from domains not associated with PayCity.

Given this, motorists should make every effort to make sure the platforms they use are legitimate.