Well said, @joanstewart - better articulated than my churning thoughts.
Each citizen would have to have a digital connection, educated in how it works, strong support functions to assist users. (How often do you see rural folk needing assistance at ATM with bank cards?)
This, for me, is where the dilemma begins - and ends. I live in a village where cash is still king. And not all (in fact a lot of it) is in the formal economy. There is an expression in the village to the effect that you can watch the same R10 note go round and round the village time and time again. That said, there are folk (lots) who get social grants and who have them deposited into their bank accounts. The young people - many unemployed and unskilled - even with matric - all have smart phones but data is expensive and patchy here. One of the big providers is in the process of putting up a tower, but that only means that signal will be less patchy - for mobile phone data. The price doesn't change.
Then, there is the very real issues of crime and drugs. We know through folk who work for us that there are mothers who, until the family stepped in, with help from SASSA, were getting their child grants and frittering every cent on tik.
One of the things that is evident from my looking at the website is that the UBU is to be spent - it says so - but with vendors that are registered. So that also means that vendors have to be tech savvy and her I also see issues for rural areas: we have at least three stores (very small), not to mention the garage and the post office that have no connectivity at all. Two of them are run by foreigners and the other by an ouma who probably has never touched a computer and still has an old fashioned till.
And our village, by comparison with some of the hamlets you find in the poorer parts of the country, is well-resourced. So...
I do think the principle is a good one, but I agree with you that there is a great deal that needs thinking through in the implementation.
@joanstewart I appreciate your considered reply.
Fiona