Capitec launches 10GB prepaid data bundle for R199 – with a catch

South African banking group Capitec has launched an affordable 10GB data bundle for prepaid users, coming in at R199.

Through the group’s mobile offering, Capitec Connect, the bank said that the bundle aims to disrupt the high prices currently charged for data by coming in at half the price of the industry standard rate.

Capitec Connect is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that operates on Cell C’s networked. The MVNO has issued over 1 million SIM cards since its launch in 2022.

Francois Viviers, Group Executive of Marketing and Communications at Capitec, said that customers have been requesting higher bundles at a more affordable price point.

While one of the biggest draws of the Capitec Connect prepaid SIM package has been the non-expiry of data, airtime or bundled, the new 10GB bundle does have an expiry attached – the data is only valid for 30 days.

This is an outlier for the Capitec mobile offering, but is standard in the industry – all comparable 10GB data bundles carry the same validity period, except for Telkom Mobile’s, which is valid for 60 days (and is 11.5GB).

According to Viviers, clients that use large amounts of data within a month “do not need non-expiry but value lower prices on large bundles”.

“We’ve met this need with the new 10GB prepaid bundle to provide much-needed relief in ensuring more people stay connected without adding strain on their budgets,” he said.

Despite this caveat, the bundle still emerges as the most affordable offered by any operator right now, expiry and all.

Notably, even Capitec’s base offering of R45 per GB (non-expiring) would come in cheaper than most other network operators for 10GB (R450).

Read: Battle of the banks 2023: Capitec vs Standard Bank vs FNB vs Absa vs Nedbank