The University of South Africa (Unisa) has revealed a new process for Electronic Fund Transfers (EFT) for students when sending them funds for allowances or refunds.
The university provides notes on each, starting with allowances which will be processed twice a month on the first and third week of each month.
As for refunds these can take up to 15 days to reflect in an account.
Both of these timings should be kept in mind when managing money, to make sure it is where it needs to be. There are few things as frustrating as needing money which is not available due to processing times.
As for the process of the EFT system itself, it is as follows:
- If you qualify for a refund and / or allowance, an email has been sent to your myLife email account, containing the relevant information along with a secure link to a site where the relevant banking details must be entered and submitted.
- After reading the email carefully, click on the link, enter your banking details and submit these. NB: Only your own, active bank account can be used. Payments to third-party accounts will not be processed. The account particulars will be verified against your ID number.
- The verification status of the details you have submitted will be displayed. This may not occur immediately –revisit the link until such time as the information is made available.
- If the bank account verification fails or is rejected, re-enter your banking details and make sure that they are correct.
We’re not the biggest fans of starting this process with an email given how often scams and other illegal activities are perpetuated by bad actors using that platform.
In the higher education sphere we saw this go awry recently when Unisa alerted NSFAS recipients to a threatening email about losing funding, which seemingly came from a legitimate email address from the latter organisation.
See our feature here about spotting scams to try and protect yourself going into the future.
