Capitec has pledged to refund all banking fees incurred during a two-day systems outage caused by what the bank described as infrastructure problems with its central servers that support its banking channels.
SA’s biggest retail bank by customer numbers became the latest big lender in the country to suffer a system failure when its online banking portal, app and USSD services began experiencing problems on Thursday morning, prompting a flurry of complaints on social media. However, by Saturday afternoon Capitec said all digital channels were online again and that it had processed all delayed payments made to and by clients.
Capitec also pledged to refund all banking fees incurred during the two-day outage and assured clients that their money and data were never at risk.
“We know we’ve let our clients down and we sincerely apologise,” Capitec spokesperson Francois Viviers said in a statement after the bank’s systems were restored. “This was an internal infrastructure issue, and we want to assure our clients that their money and data is safe with us, as always. We have never experienced an issue of this magnitude and will continue to do our best to ensure that this does not happen again. We have system upgrades and tests in place to support this.”
Capitec was forced to pause its digital channels for about 40 hours to ensure a sustainable recovery after one of its banking system databases began slowing down sporadically. That resulted in clients being unable to access the Capitec banking app and internet banking platform as well as USSD services from Thursday morning though they could still access cash at ATMs and transact at point-of-sales devices.
Capitec’s recent systems problems are the latest in a series of crashes that have bedevilled some of SA’s most prestigious banking brands in recent months. FNB, the retail banking unit of financial services group FirstRand, was forced to apologise after systems outages left clients unable to use their cards or access digital channels in early July. At the time FNB declined to provide reasons for the systems outages that occurred between July 1 and July 3.
Standard Bank, Africa’s biggest lender by assets, has also suffered a string of systems crashes in 2022 that ultimately led to the resignation of its chief engineering officer in early June. The resignation of Standard Bank’s engineering head came after a huge systems crash on May 21 left clients unable to swipe their cards at point-of-sale devices or draw cash from ATMs for more than six hours.
Standard Bank attributed the systems crash to the failure of a component responsible for processing card and ATM transactions and switching them from external devices to the bank’s internal systems. At the time it said the outage was unrelated to the three other “high-impact” incidents that had occurred in prior months as those were due to a software bug.
By midmorning on Friday Capitec customers were still lighting up social media with complaints, with some comparing the systems outage to Eskom’s load-shedding while others threatened to close their accounts. The bank, which had 18.1-million active customers by end-February 2022, was also trending on Twitter under the hashtag #Capitec.
“We recognise that this has tested the trust that people have in Capitec as a brand,” said Viviers. “We can assure you that it is an internal infrastructure problem and that at no point is our clients’ money or data at risk.”
Capitec’s shares closed at R2,067.31 on Friday, a 1.9% rise from their previous close. That gave the bank a market capitalisation of just more than R240bn, making it the third-biggest lender by market value after FirstRand and Standard Bank.
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