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.

South African Physical Shop Apps

Have you ever done a search of "South Africa" in your app store?  I have, I was trying to find apps that were actually relevant to the country I was staying in!  As simple as that sounds it was a hard task.  Searching for apps that actually reference South Africa simply brings up a bunch of rubbish apps that you would never want near your phone.

So I thought that I should tackle trying to find you all some apps that are relevant to South Africa and, having reviewed South African News what better way to carry on than with the Shopping apps.  Mostly I have reviewed the Grocery Shopping Apps, but I added in Edgars because when I was almost finished typing up I saw they had an app, and it was actually the best App.  I hope we can convince PnP and Checkers to put more effort into their apps.

Pick 'n Pay

First off, the PnP app is not great, I only found it useful for the smart shopper card.  While you are standing in the queue you can switch your points to cash and you can load vouchers based on what you already have in your trolley. However when I tried to get the cashier to ring up the vouchers on my phone I faced the usual "I don't know what to do with that" problem.

New technology is introduced and it becomes hard to use because the shop hasn't bothered to educate it's cashiers how to ring it up.  There is even an option that you can tap that tells the cashier what steps to go through and they still didn't get it.  They HAD to ask someone else and I luckily eventually came right.  I'm not that used to being an earlier adopter that I have the patience to teach each new cashier how to load my vouchers.

You can also choose to donate your point to charity if you like... perhaps you'd just like to see general promotions as well.  Not something that I worry to check, I must say.


What else do i expect the app to do?  I dunno, most American shop apps these days have recipes, shopping lists and so much more.  I can't help bumping into them when I'm trying to find a decent shopping list app here in South Africa.

Checkers

Checkers has basically the same app as PnP, who copied who?  Perhaps you can tell me in the comments section.  

You sign up, you get a bunch of coupons which seem to be worth a whole lot of money (I can save a whole R2746.50! Yay!), you can select you want and key in your WCode at the cashier. 
 I haven't actually shopped with this app, but I imagine you will get the same problem when you present this to a cashier, what do I do with this!
I dunno, maybe Checkers does better with training their staff.

Here you can see the Coupons that are available and basically you just select them so that there is a huge tick and tap Redeem all Coupons at the top.  You then can go to the Cashier and type in your WCode. Who knows what the cashier has to do first to allow you to type in your WCode!

So yeah, nothing much better than PnP.

Woolworths

The Woolworths app seems to be the best and worst of them.  I guess its more like a credit card app.  You can get your statements of what you purchased, but that is it. Of course, you need to have an account with Woolworths to do this.

So the Woolworths app is not really a shopping app, but more an app for its financial services.  I simply include it here because Woolworths is a shop and they have an app.  Nothing much else to say I'm afraid.

Edgars

Having only discovered this app at the end of writing this article I am pleasantly surprised that Edgars has actually added a shopping trolley. You can scan your items as you shop.  I would use this to see how much I have in my trolley and am going to spend at the check-out.  However you can use it to "order" the items and have them delivered to the store.  I'm not sure how long this "delivery" takes, but it would be weird if it took more than a few minutes, you have to scan or type in the barcode to add items to your basket.

So it has it's problems, but at least they are doing more than the other shops!  You can view your Thank-U Points, you can see your account info and you can scan their items to add to a list of items.  You might even want to just scan items to add them to a wish list for the end of the month!

So certainly, my vote goes to the Edgars app.  At least its more useful than giving you vouchers or telling you your balance.  It actually does both AND you can create a shopping list, whoa, stop the bus! What over acheivers!

Please leave a comment below or share the post on Facebook if you like this or have a favourite shopping app.