• Tenet Technology says it has paid all of its beneficiaries for March, with payments rolling out from the 5th.
• The company has yet to see the results of an internal investigation launched by NSFAS last year that led to claims that the four payment partners would be fired.
• Like eZaga, Tenet Technology is operating as if it is business as usual despite waiting to be fired.

According to the CEO of Tenet Technology (Tenetech), the company began paying students their stipends directly, starting on 5th March 2024 and has now paid all of its beneficiaries for the month.

“To date we have paid 100% of students that are instructed by a payment file sent by NSFAS,” Ryan Passmore, CEO of Tenetech, told Hypertext via email. This is after we had received word from concerned students that Tenetech had not disbursed funds to them.

We had been attempting to get in contact with Tenetech since July 2023, when the company was being sued for copyright infringement. The matter now being amicably settled, Passmore told us.

Tenetech only got back to us this week, claiming that it have been inundated with emails from students struggling with the direct payment system onboarding process. eZaga told us it was facing a similar issue last year.

“Whilst we can only assist those NSFAS beneficiaries that NSFAS onboard with us. NSFAS are keeping students updated with their registration progress, however, we do believe 1.9 million applications are being processed,” he explained. Officially, NSFAS said it has received around 1.5 million applications for student funding, where just under 1 million have been provisionally funded.

“All students were required as an update to our security to verify themselves (KYC update) again before transacting. This was a communicated security update to enhance the security on all bank accounts,” he added.

Passmore told us that Tenetech has now launched an investigation after we reached out with questions from concerned students about alleged non-payment. “We are a company that has nothing to hide,” he said.

Last year, NSFAS said that it would terminate the contracts of fintech firms Coinvest, Narroco, Tenetech and eZaga after an internal investigation found that there were fraudulent links between two of the companies and then-CEO Andile Nongogo. The two companies that were fingered were Coinvest and eZaga.

This was amid a wave of controversy over the direct payment system the scheme hurriedly launched in July last year, where student beneficiaries would no longer have to receive their funding from their universities, but instead directly from NSFAS through digital channels created by the four payment partners.

eZaga and Tenet Technologies (Tenetech) have both separately confirmed to Hypertext that they are yet to receive the findings of the investigation from the government-funded scheme. Both of the firms still claim they are receiving payment files from NSFAS and are still handling direct student payments as if it were business as usual.

The scheme has said that the four partners will only have their contracts terminated pending the finalisation of a legal process. This process is still ongoing and there is no timeline currently set.

Earlier this month NSFAS roped back in universities to help facilitate payments to students for the months of February and March, citing the need to find a new method to pay beneficiaries their allowances directly as the payment partners are being phased out.

NSFAS is still looking for a way to pay student beneficiaries after March. It is likely it will continue using the supposedly fired fintech partners for some time yet to facilitate student payments.

For beneficiaries looking to get in contact with Tenetech, you can use the company’s toll-free call centre line 080 087 3287, or the support email support@tenetech.co.za or the in-app support desk.