Students who receive funding from the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and are studying at the University of South Africa (Unisa) will now receive their allowances directly from the tertiary institution.

Before now Unisa made use of Intellimali, a service provider that handles these kinds of financial services and is used by several universities.

This partnership will come to a close at the end of this month, after which Unisa will will handle the allowances themselves.

“The three-year agreement between UNISA and Intellimali for the disbursements of allowance has come to an end on the 31st March 2022. UNISA is in the process of preparing to pay allowances directly to students’ bank accounts. Students are therefore requested to ensure that they have active bank accounts. Students will be directed to a platform to capture their banking details. The university is working tirelessly to ensure that allowances are released during this month of April 2022,” an announcement reads.

Intellimali was in the news recently as Sibongile Mani – the “NSFAS Millionaire” – was sentenced to five years in prison after allegedly spending R800 000 after she was mistakenly given R14 million as part of her NSFAS funding.

At the time of the incident Mani was enrolled at the Walter Sisulu University an institution that, according to NSFAS, used Intellimali.

NSFAS has released a lengthy report about its non-involvement in this case which we recommend people read over in full here.

“Investigations were also conducted by Walter Sisulu University and DHET. The facts have revealed that the only entity that suffered financial loss due to the weakness in internal controls and systems that led to this incident was Intellimali, a service provider appointed by Walter Sisulu University,” NSFAS writes in the report.

As Unisa states above its agreement with Intellimali was scheduled to end after the three years elapsed, though we have to wonder if the Mani case had anything to do with proceedings.

Regardless it will be interesting to see how things proceed from here and, most importantly, if the lives of NSFAS-funded students at Unisa are impacted in any way by this change.