Capitec coming after rich South Africans

With just under 26 million active clients, Capitec has started to cast its net wider, looking to attract new customers at both the lower and higher ends of the income spectrum.

Capitec’s 2026 Annual Results revealed that one in three South African adults is now active on its app, making it the country’s biggest bank by customers by far.

The bank’s customer base grew by 7% in the 2026 financial year, reaching 25.8 million active clients.

Of these 25.8 million, 15 million are active on the bank’s app, 12 million use its value-added services, and 9.9 million are fully banked.

Capitec’s insurance and business banking offerings have also shown strong growth over the past few years, with the bank now supporting 4.5 million insurance clients and 465,000 businesses and entrepreneurs.

When Capitec was launched in 2001, it stood out among South Africa’s established banking giants for targeting the historically underserved lower-income and unbanked market segment.

This unique strategy enabled Capitec to take on the incumbents and become one of South Africa’s biggest banks, playing alongside giants like Absa, Standard Bank, and FNB.

Capitec has therefore traditionally been considered a bank for South Africa’s middle- and mass-market segments, which have become highly competitive over the past few years.

New banking entrants, including Old Mutual’s OM Bank and Pepkor’s planned bank, are targeting this market, which is currently dominated by Capitec.

With competition rising and Capitec already holding a major share of its target market, the bank is now turning its attention towards other segments of the market.

Since its business banking offering was launched, Capitec has had South Africa’s burgeoning informal market – or as the bank calls it, the ‘emerging market’ – in its line of sight.

The bank tailors its products to meet the needs of micro-, small- and medium-sized businesses operating in this market, aiming to replicate its success in personal banking in business banking.

At the same time, and at the other end of the spectrum, Capitec is looking to capture a larger share of South Africa’s higher-income market through its personal banking offerings, with notable success so far.

Capitec’s client metrics breakdown can be seen in the graphic below.

High earners with high potential

In its 2026 annual results presentation, Capitec CEO Graham Lee highlighted high earners, defined as those earning R50,000 or more per month, as a “high potential segment” for the bank.

This segment showed strong growth for Capitec in the 2026 financial year, up 21% from 2025.

This comes as the bank has been tailoring some of its products and value-added services to better attract higher-income earners.

For example, Lee said in the presentation that Capitec now offers “the best credit card for international travel”, an offering clearly geared more towards the higher end of South Africa’s income spectrum.

Lee explained that a Capitec credit card charges zero international card fees, zero forex commission, offers a 1% cash back reward, as well as free travel insurance.

Recently, the bank has also started offering lounge access and a travel eSIM for credit card users.

According to Capitec’s results presentation, its credit card has been used by clients in 178 countries, with client spend having reached R4.3 billion on international payments in FY2026.

Capitec’s targeting of the higher-income market puts it in direct competition with banks like Investec, Discovery Bank, Standard Bank, FNB and Absa.

However, what makes Capitec’s offering unique is that it does not offer a variety of transactional bank accounts.

When it comes to personal banking, Capitec offers only one transactional account, which charges the same fees and offers the same benefits regardless of income level.

Other banks in this market offer a variety of transactional accounts, charging varying fees and offering different benefits depending on the option clients choose. 

These different accounts are then marketed or offered to different clients, normally based on their income levels.