1. PAYMENT ADMINISTRATION SOLUTIONS

2. Overview of Intellimali
Established in 2009
More than 50% black-owned
Level 2 B-BBEE
Contracted to institutions (it has never been NSFAS operandi to appoint rd party service providers in this category)
Manage allowances for more than 100,000 students per annum
Managed more than R5 billion in allowances in 9 years
Excellent track record

3. Nature of the business
Institutions use a technology interface to upload allowances directly into the Intellicard system In a few cases, they IntelliMali a specifically designed spreadsheet;  
Allowances are checked by the Uploads team who are dedicated to this task;
Allowances are uploaded by a separate team in our finance department;
These allowances are in the form of a 'credit' and no money is deposited into a bank account; 
The allowance is only made available within our 'closed-loop' system environment;
Students are able to spend their allowance at institution approved merchants;
Intellimali’s contract with approved merchants prohibits them from selling certain items to students;
Students agree to conditions for using the Intellicard in which they agree not to spend their allowances on prohibited items and not to convert their allowances to cash in any way;
Students purchase from the merchants by swiping their student card, using an IntelliCard or by accessing a voucher on their cell phones;
IntelliMali conducts a weekly reconciliation of all spending, request funds from the institution and once funds are received, pay on to the merchants.

4. The “Upload File”
The over allocation incident began with the upload of the allowance file.
The findings are:
There were 3,735 WSU students in this batch
The file was processed correctly
There was no error flagged in the Upload file
The “Result File” report indicated that the upload was also correct
In simple terms, there was no oversight, error or negligence by a member of the Intellimali team in processing of the upload file.
The system feedback confirmed that the student in question received the correct allocation of R1,400.

5. Upload file report Results of upload:
Results of upload:
3735 students - Students rejected : 2 = 3733
R5,226,200 Total value
R5,226,200 / 3733 = R1400 per student

6. The student’s conduct
The student checked her account a number of times on the morning of 1st June This was normal as all WSU students were waiting for their monthly food allowance. She began checking at 7am and checked every 2 hours or so during the course of the morning.
She logged in at 13h09 on 1st June 2017 and would have at that moment, been aware of the R14,1 million balance in her account.
She checked her balance again at 14h00. She then made a small purchase at Steers (R56,57) at 14h55 and another purchase at Steers (R339,70) at 15h20.
At 17h45 she made a purchase at Discount Supermarket (R1,255) and …then between 19h31 and 19h54 proceeded to access more than R20,000 in a number of transactions at Checkers Vincent.
The behavior of the student does not demonstrate a concerned individual who requires time to ‘sleep on it’ or ‘consider the matter’ but rather demonstrates a person who appears, without guilt, to set about very quickly spending as much as she could.
It is interesting to note the amounts spent outside of the East London area where she is studying and further investigation into why amounts were accessed in George, Queenstown and Centurion should shed further light on her conduct.

7. The context at WSU
During the period April – July 2017, Intellimali had a number of positive engagements with WSU administrators.
They included:
Incidents of book merchants providing cash instead of books;
Students trying to collude with merchants; and
Merchants reporting students trying to get other shoppers to use their card in exchange for cash.
We have been working in collaboration with WSU management to manage inappropriate student and merchant conduct

8. Measures & Reports
We request a control list from each institution or funder of registered, fee-paying
students and then cross reference against the list. This allows us to determine
‘double’ allocations to the same student and ‘ghost’ students who might receive funds;
We check for ‘double-dipping’: students who have more than one bursary/loan but have not disclosed this fact the funders;
Intellicard terminals/machines have a maximum transaction value programmed;
Students may not make more than four transactions on an allowance per day;
Shoprite send ‘prohibited spend’ lists monthly. We notify institutions of student misconduct and deactivate cards;
We have additional functionality in place to measure and report of student conduct.

9. Conclusion
It is important to mention that we have appointed a prominent audit firm to conduct a forensic investigation;
Should we determine that we have been the victims of foul play, we will inform all the relevant stakeholders.
The investigation, which includes the South African Police Services, is ongoing and we will not be able to divulge sensitive information as it could jeopardize the case.