At least 130,000 bank accounts to receive state benefits and linked to My Number national identification cards have been found to belong not to cardholders but their family members, the Digital Agency said Wednesday, the latest setback for the government's efforts to promote the use of the ID system.
In many cases, parents provided accounts in their own names when registering their children to the service instead of their children's names. In another 748 cases, completely different individuals' banking details were highly likely registered.
State benefits such as child benefits and pension payments can be received by the bank accounts linked to the ID cards that were introduced in 2016. Some 54.85 million accounts have been registered as of May 28, according to the agency.