iPhone Capitec Banking App Review

I am an avid fan of Capitec.  I'm not ashamed to admit it, I mean the bank pays me to bank with them!  My fees are about R30 a month AND I get at least R50 each month in interest, that excludes the interest I get from my fixed deposits (which are also much better than any other bank).

I remember when I was looking at trying to save money and I went to ABSA (my bank at the time) and asked them about fixed deposits and other savings products.  They actually told me I had to pay them to put my money away!  A fee to lock my money away so that they could use it to make money for themselves!  Countries like the UK and China have free bank accounts, why are we so behind?  If you pay a monthly fee you get amazing benefits like what FNB is offering, cash back, travel insurance, all of that.  The only positive thing I can think of regarding fee based banking is that it did protect our banks somewhat during the 2008 economic crises.

Anyway, so, back to the point! The Capitec Banking App is here.  I quite like the app.  It looks nice and polished compared to other apps I have seen and it is much better than the Capitec Online Banking Website.  The only problem is that it does sometimes get stuck loading and can take a while if your internet connection is unreliable.
When I first registered the app I ran into quite a few troubles as it did not ask me to send an sms to confirm my cell number.  This could be because I was too keen and opened the app before the assistant had completed registering me or maybe it was because of my dodgy wifi mifi device I was using (out of 3G data on my phone already)

The other thing I don't like about the app is that it now replaces my pin dongle (the little device you pay R150 for when activating internet banking).  I now have to use my cellphone to access my online banking.  The worst part of this, and I have seen it happen to a mybroadband forum participant, is that if I change my cellphone I have to go to the branch again and re-register my new phone.  I remember when my phone broke I changed phones twice in 2 weeks, I first went back to my old phone, but it was far too slow so I started to use my wife's old phone.  It would have been such a pain to have to go to the branch so many times.

Reason 1 Android is better than IOS

My Android phone broke.  I had a lovely Samsung Note II and I dropped it one too many times.  1 reason why iPhone's are better than Samsung phones is that they don't break as easily.  However, back to the OS's (hopefully Sony is now making more durable Android phones...).  I have now been forced to use the wife's old iPhone, due to lack of readership of this blog and its money making prospects.

Stock with the iPhone you are able to track your data usage, new in IOS 7 you can even turn off which apps are able to use your mobile data. You can also do this for Android, but it's a little more complicated.

In your iPhone you can go to "Settings", "Cellular" and scroll down to see the amount of data you have used as per the screenshot.

The problem is you don't know over what period.  So you scroll to the bottom and hit reset statistics and plan to check your data usage in the morning.  You forget and about 2 weeks go by and you are out of data because its the end of the month and you are South African.  So you check your data usage and you see you have legitimately used all your data, you just can't remember when you last reset the statistics.  So what is the point??  Of course, if you want a better Data usage tracker you can always get an app like My Data Manager or Onavo

In Android, as you can see here, you can change the period, you can check back to previous periods, you can even view your Wi-Fi usage if you so choose!  AND this is all built into the Operating System.  You see the two lines across the Chart?  You can move those with your finger and then it will tell you each app's data usage during that period.  This is so useful because if Google Play Services was eating all my data and can just tap on it and restrict Background Data.

If you want to know how to setup your Data usage cycle in Android please check back on my blog soon as I'll shortly be posting about how to make the change.

You can even set it to warn you when you reach your cap or even stop your data usage entirely!

Of course, if you want to see the previous "Data Usage Cycle"  you can just tap on it and you will see this drop down box.  You can then select the previous month and see if that troublesome app is the same one that is constantly using up all your data.

Anyway, as I always say, an iPhone is great for people who just want the phone to work, but those who love to mess around and change settings on their phone Android is the way to go. 

Please leave your comments or suggestions below, I would love to hear from you.