Capitec hits 13 million customers in South Africa

Capitec Bank says it is adding 200,000 new customers every month – and it welcomed its 13 millionth client in October.

In a statement on Friday (8 November), Capitec CEO Gerrie Fourie said that these statistics show that the bank is heading in the right direction and has no plans to rest on its laurels.

He said that Capitec’s branch footprint is currently used by over 6 million clients monthly, while it currently services 6.5 million digital clients.

He added that the recent acquisition of Mercantile Bank will further boost its offerings.

“Our acquisition of Mercantile is exciting, their emphasis on small to medium sized enterprises and entrepreneurs will fast track our entry into the business banking market,” he said,

“We believe there’s an opportunity to offer a business banking solution, which is based on the same fundamentals that made Capitec successful in the retail banking sector.

“It will bring new opportunities for both companies, for the Staff at Capitec and Mercantile and for Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs. I look forward to building Capitec’s business banking offering with my teams using the firm foundation created by Mercantile”.

Biggest banks

Capitec is by far the largest bank in South Africa by customer numbers, having already led the sector by this measure at the time of its full year results (March 2019).

Tracking customer numbers at the big South African banks has become more challenging over the years, with actual figures not being as forthcoming as before.

Banks like Capitec, which continues to show strong growth, will happily point out the hundreds of thousands of new customers being signed on each month, while banks that have lost ground over the years are less likely to report their customer numbers.

While BusinessTech included the customer numbers available at FY2018/19 in the table below, another key metric to look at is satisfaction levels among those customers.

The latest South African Consumer Satisfaction Index for the country’s retail banks showed that Capitec and FNB customers are the happiest with their services, while Absa and Standard Bank lag behind.

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