South African ID Numbers at Checkout

Payments + Shipping & Fulfilment
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Topic summary

Merchants selling to South Africa face a requirement from couriers to collect customers’ 13-digit ID numbers for delivery. Initially, one merchant manually emailed each customer to request this information, which proved unsustainable.

Shopify does not natively support custom checkout fields for South Africa (only available for select countries or Plus merchants). After multiple merchants encountered the same issue, a workaround was shared:

Solution steps:

  • Create a dedicated market for South Africa
  • Use the “Translate & Adapt” app to relabel an existing checkout field (like “Address line 2”) to “South African ID Number” for South African customers only
  • Install “BSure Checkout Rules” app to enforce validation requiring exactly 13 digits in that field

This approach places the ID number within the address section on shipping labels, allowing non-Plus merchants to collect required information without manual follow-up.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hello everybody,

We’ve recently started selling in South Africa and we discovered that every courier we have checked with requires a 13 digit South African ID number to deliver the orders.

Right now, we have solved this by manually emailing each customer and asking for their ID number, however, this is not sustainable.

We’re not on Shopify Plus, so we have limited customization capability regarding checkout. We have also been in touch with Shopify who explained that they do help non-plus merchants with custom checkout fields, but only for a few countries, and South Africa is not one of them.

-Are there any South African merchants that have ran in to this problem, and how have you been able to solve it?

-Or are there any developers that have any ideas on how to solve this for a non-plus merchant?

Thank you in advance!

Best regards,
Jacob

2

Hi, I am experiencing the same problem, how did you solve it?

3

Hi, i have just encountered this too, any solutions?

4

Hey,
Here’s how we solved it:

  1. Create a market for South Africa.
  2. Install Translate & Adapt, translate “Address line 2 (Apartment, suite, etc.)”, or any other field to “South African ID Number” for South Africa specifically, so it does not apply outside of South Africa.
  3. Install BSure Checkout Rules, and set up a rule that ensures anyone from South Africa can only enter exactly 13 digits in that field.

You’ll have the ID number in the middle of their address on the label.