In particular, it alleged that there had been procedural irregularities, inter alia, in the composition of the bid evaluation committee, in the due diligence conducted in respect of Cash Paymaster's black economic empowerment (BEE) compliance, and in SASSA's issuing of a "bidders' notice" in June 2011.

In August 2012, Judge Elias Matojane of the High Court's North Gauteng Division issued a declaratory order in AllPay's favour, holding that the tender process had indeed been invalid.

[1] However, he declined to set the award aside, fearing that the practical effect of such a move would be to disrupt the delivery of social grants on which millions of residents relied.

However, it found that there had been two material irregularities, both in contravention of provisions of the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act: SASSA had not required Cash Paymaster to substantiate its claim that its BEE partners would manage and execute over 74 per cent of the tender, and SASSA's bidders' notice of June 2011 had created "vagueness and uncertainty" about the criteria used in the tender process.

Moreover, Froneman found that the question of remedy raised "difficult factual and legal issues" which could not adequately be resolved with the information currently available to the court.

Cash Paymaster was also required to provide the court with an audited financial statement of the expenses and income it had incurred under the invalid contract.

The invalidation of the Cash Paymaster contract in AllPay II, and the intransigence of SASSA, led to the grants crisis of 2017 and to a related sequence of litigation in the Constitutional Court in Black Sash v Minister of Social Development.