Capitec will launch a number of new features in the coming months as part of the bank’s increasing drive towards digitalisation, says chief executive Gerrie Fourie.<\/p>\n
Fourie said that that Covid-19 pandemic ‘did not steer the bank off course’ and its management team remained highly focused on building a bank for the future.<\/p>\n
This includes a focus on remote onboarding and banking, with the coronavirus pandemic showing a clear push by Capitec’s customers towards digital, he said.<\/p>\n
Some of the key changes include:<\/p>\n
Singling out the new Easy Equities partnership, Fourie said that Capitec hopes to launch this functionality by mid-October. He said that customers will be able to buy shares directly through Easy Equities at a discounted rate.<\/p>\n
While Capitec has historically focused on the lower-income market, Fourie said that he sees this new partnership as more of a ‘value-add’ for clients.<\/p>\n
He said that lower-income people normally don’t invest into equities, however, there is clear interested amongst the bank’s younger clients.<\/p>\n
Results published on Wednesday (30 September) showed an increase of 24% in digital banking clients, since August 2019, which now amounts to 7.3 million clients, making Capitec South Africa\u2019s largest digital bank.<\/p>\n
Capitec said that accelerated adoption was driven by clients\u2019 need to stay safe and bank from home, while benefitting from lower transaction fees and zero-rated data charges on the app. Consequently, app, internet and USSD transactions collectively grew by 52% to 556 million in the past six months.<\/p>\n
Fourie said that the lockdown has significantly increased the importance of digital banking, helping to drive its adoption.<\/p>\n
“The lockdown has accelerated South Africa\u2019s shift towards a digital economy and consumers are now more than ever looking for client-centric digital banking that puts them in control of their finances.<\/p>\n
“Our active app clients have grown 38% to over 4 million and our new app is the most downloaded app on all major South African app stores.”<\/p>\n
Virtual cards<\/strong><\/p>\n Fourie said he was also excited about the growth of digital payments where cards are not present as the bank looks to expand into e-commerce and the digital payment space which it considers the future.<\/p>\n \u201cThe one that excites me is card-not-present. That\u2019s the future of payments, where you pay with QR [codes], etc,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe strongly believe in e-commerce and digital banking, the payment space. How do you make it seamless? Paying with QR-codes. That\u2019s a very big focus for us. Making certain the business experience of our merchants is slick.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that about 1 million clients made 4 million transactions this way in the reporting period. This has partly been spurred on by the shift to digital because of the national lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
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