Capitec Bank, South Africa's largest retail bank by number of clients, drew $165 million (R2.7 billion) in group headline earnings from its Capitec Connect and Value Added Services (VAS) divisions in the six months ended 31 August 2026. The contribution lifted non-bank entities to 28.4% of total earnings, up from 26.3% in 2025.

The two units span services that sit outside the group's core banking operations, including prepaid airtime, data, electricity, money transfers and mobile offerings.

According to the bank's unaudited interim results, released on Wednesday, combined gross income from VAS and Capitec Connect rose 32% to $232.2 million (R3.8 billion). Gross net income from VAS alone climbed 30% to R3.5 billion as the number of customers purchasing prepaid airtime, data, electricity and other services grew 14% to 13.5 million. VAS transactions increased 26% to 1.1 billion.

Capitec Connect, the group's mobile virtual network operator that sells mobile services over Cell C's network, recorded a 72% surge in gross net income to $17.3 million (R284 million). The MVNO model allows a brand to sell airtime, data and SIM services over an existing operator's network without building or running its own infrastructure. That figure represents nearly two-thirds of the $27 million (R442 million) the unit generated across the whole of 2025.

Active subscribers on the network over the past three months rose to 1.8 million from the 1.1 million recorded a year earlier. Data usage more than doubled to 34.3 petabytes, while voice minutes increased 84% to 573 million.

As part of its marketing strategy, the company introduced free calls on the same network and raised the maximum airtime borrowing limit from $0.61 (R10) to $6.11 (R100). Subscribers subsequently took up $6 million (R96.8 million) in Capitec Connect advances, up from $2.2 million (R36.1 million).

“Capitec Connect continued to scale as more clients used the product for affordable everyday connectivity. Growth was supported by numbers of active clients and higher usage across both data and services,” the group said in the earnings release.

The expansion into mobile services and fintech forms part of Capitec's effort to broaden its operations and strengthen its earnings base. Because services such as airtime, data and electricity are purchased repeatedly as part of everyday spending, they provide a recurring income stream alongside the group's banking revenue. Other leading African banks, including Standard Bank, Access Bank and GTBank, are also exploring similar extensions to their business frontlines.

Group headline earnings for the six months rose 19% to $580.6 million (R9.5 billion). Operating expenses increased 5% to $640.5 million (R10.5 billion), while the cost-to-income ratio fell to 36% from 40%, reflecting income growing faster than expenses. Technology spending outside salaries rose 8% to $103.7 million (R1.7 billion), driven largely by a 27% increase in cloud fees and a 20% rise in spending on outsourced technology resources.

Business banking headline earnings grew 52% to $37.1 million (R609 million), although the credit loss ratio, which measures loan losses as a share of the lending book, climbed to 3.4% from 2.1%.

Digital payments activity also expanded sharply. Subscribers using Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay and Garmin Pay jumped 68% to 2.4 million, pushing spending up 87% to $3.18 billion (R52.1 billion). Banking app users increased to 16.5 million from 13.9 million.

Capitec Pay, the group's enterprise payments platform, processed 182 million payments worth $2.75 billion (R45 billion) for roughly 12.5 million clients, recording a 51% surge in net income to $22.3 million (R365 million).