{"id":612557,"date":"2025-10-01T09:05:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T07:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=612557"},"modified":"2025-10-01T09:07:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T07:07:57","slug":"capitec-connect-is-already-making-big-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/612557-capitec-connect-is-already-making-big-money.html","title":{"rendered":"Capitec Connect is already making big money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa’s largest bank by customer numbers, Capitec, has released its interim results for the six months ended 31 August 2025, revealing strong subscriber and net income growth for Capitec Connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of active Capitec Connect clients increased to 1.1 million in the last three months, up from around 600,000 in the same period last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Net income from the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) grew to R165 million in the reporting period, up from R69 million during the same period in 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitec reports that data usage increased by over 100% during the reporting period, reaching 14.9 petabytes. Its data usage amounted to 5.1 petabytes during the six months ended 31 August 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Voice usage grew from 95 million minutes to 311 million minutes,” it adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitec customers get 1% cash back on credit card purchases and receive 1GB of free Capitec Connect data every month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We have rewarded clients with 449 terabytes in data rewards since 1 March 2025,” the bank says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capitec Connect runs on Cell C’s network, and its 500,000-odd active subscriber increase in the past three months largely accounts for the growth Cell C has seen this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MyBroadband recently reported that Cell C’s subscriber growth up to May 2025 was almost entirely from its MVNO partners<\/a>, like Capitec Connect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cell C’s direct subscriber base declined significantly between 2022 and August 2023. When you include the operator’s MVNO customers, its base has been growing since August 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the tremendous growth of MVNO partners like Capitec Connect is good news for Cell C, its growth coming purely from MVNO customers is a risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The operator faces increased competition from bigger players like Vodacom and MTN in the space, with Telkom also launching an MVNO platform earlier this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key figures regarding Capitec Connect’s performance during the six months ended 31 August 2025 are provided in the table below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporting period<\/th>3-month active subscribers<\/th>Net income<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
H1 2025<\/strong><\/td>1.1 million<\/td>R165 million<\/td><\/tr>
H1 2024<\/strong><\/td>Approx 600,000<\/td>R69 million<\/td><\/tr>
Change<\/strong><\/td>83%<\/mark><\/strong><\/td>139%<\/mark><\/strong><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Big MVNO growth expected<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

BMIT’s SA MVNO Report shows that MVNO subscribers doubled from 2.5 million in 2022 to nearly five million in 2024. The figure is expected to reach 11 million to 12 million by 2029.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cell C was the first operator in South Africa to roll out an MVNO platform in 2006, enabling players like FNB Connect, Virgin Mobile, and Trace Mobile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MTN launched its fully fledged MVNO platform in 2020, more than a decade after Cell C. The MVNO market has experienced a boom since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2023, MTN had signed up 30 MVNO partners, some of which were new, and others had switched over from Cell C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cell C CEO Jorge Mendes has doubled down on a strategy to become the go-to destination for companies looking to diversify into MVNO services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We want to make sure that we are the home of MVNOs. So we are effectively the network of networks,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We’d like to be the first choice for an MVNO partnership to personalise these deals.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendes said Cell C would effectively become an aggregation player aggregating mobile traffic through various MVNOs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said there is no major difference between the profitability of MVNOs compared to Cell C’s direct subscriber base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendes said the MVNO business operates with a similar profit margin and, in some cases, greater than its direct-to-consumer business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Capitec Connect’s three-month active customer base increased by half a million subscribers in the first half of its 2026 financial year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":462775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10106,14],"tags":[5334,81699,355,20557],"class_list":["post-612557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","category-cellular","tag-capitec","tag-capitec-connect","tag-cell-c","tag-mobile-virtual-network-operator-mvno"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612557"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612557"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612557\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":612573,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612557\/revisions\/612573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}