South Africa Passport Number

Detects South African passport numbers issued by the Department of Home Affairs under the South African Passports and Travel Documents Act 4 of 1994. Passport numbers are nine characters: one uppercase prefix letter identifying the passport type — A (normal/tourist), M (maxi), E (official), D (diplomatic), T (travel document) — followed by eight digits (SARS documents current issuance as starting A0, M0, E0).

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: medium
Confidence justification: Medium confidence: a documented prefix letter plus exactly eight digits is structurally distinctive, but invoice, order and serial codes can share the letter-plus-digits shape, so corroborating passport keywords are required on every tier. recommended_confidence is the evidence-gated 75 workhorse tier per registry convention.
Jurisdictions: za
Regulations: POPIA, South African Passports and Travel Documents Act 4 of 1994
Frameworks: ISO 27001, ISO 27701
Data categories: pii, government-id
Scope: narrow
Risk rating: 8
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Compatible, Netskope: Compatible

Pattern

\b[ADEMT]\d{8}\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

passport, passport number, travel document, ID number, identification, ID card, license, permit, registration, certificate

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Passport A04564891 (South African passport, Department of Home Affairs) — Normal tourist passport number (A prefix) with label context
paspoortnommer M04567890 — Maxi passport number (M prefix) with Afrikaans label
D98765432 — Diplomatic passport number (D prefix)
Official travel on E01230456 was approved — Official passport number (E prefix)

Should not match

B01234567 — B is not a documented South African passport type prefix
A0123456 — Only seven digits after the prefix — too short
A012345678 — Nine digits after the prefix — too long
a01234567 — Lowercase prefix — passport numbers are printed uppercase (pattern is case-sensitive)
8501015800084 — Thirteen-digit South African ID number, not a passport number

Known false positives

Product codes, invoice or serial references of the form single-letter-plus-eight-digits beginning with A, D, E, M or T. Mitigation: Every tier requires passport keywords within the 300-character proximity window; high and medium tiers additionally apply the template-exclusion NOT-group.
Sample passport numbers in Home Affairs application guidance and templates. Mitigation: The high and medium tiers apply the template-exclusion NOT-group to suppress sample and documentation content.