Author: Gugu Lourie

TYMEBANK, one of South Africa’s digital banks, has attracted 5 million customers as of 30 June 2022. The digital bank owned by billionaire Patrice Motsepe was launched in February 2019. “While progress continues to be made on customer acquisitions, the bank is placing increased focus on tracking customer activity and ensuring new product rollouts,” African Raibow Capital Investments informed investors today. “The bank is continuously adapting its product set to reflect the changing needs of customers, which includes diversifying the customer base.” TymeBank has no monthly banking fees and in most cases, transaction costs are 30 to 50% lower than what customers would pay…

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Eskom said this morning that three units at the Kendal Power Station tripped, forcing the power utility to implement stage 4 load shedding. Eskom said state 4 load shedding will start at 10am until 5am on Thursday. The power utility tweeted this morning: #Loadshedding #Stage4 A sudden tripping of three Kendal Power Station units (1 920MW maximum generating capacity) has forced the implementation of Stage 4 loadshedding starting at 10:00 THIS morning until 05:00 on Thursday morning. A full statement will be published shortly — Eskom Hld SOC Ltd (@Eskom_SA) September 13, 2022 “In the early hours of…

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Strong bi-national relationships between Nigeria and South Africa are critical for Africa’s progress,” said MTN Group Chairman Mcebisi Jonas. This week, MTN Group hosted MTN Nigeria’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee in Johannesburg for a strategy retreat during which the leadership of the Group’s largest subsidiary reflected on its strategic priorities for the next three years. “As MTN, we appreciate that our own progress cannot happen without the two nations building stronger and stronger ties and providing leadership to the continent,” said Jonas. The MTN Nigeria delegation was led by Chairman Ernest Ndukwe and CEO Karl Toriola. During the trip,…

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Discovery Bank, part of Adrian Gore’s Discovery Group, said on Wednesday that new business volumes continued to be strong, achieving more than 800 average daily new-to-Bank sales (vs 500 in June 2021). Discovery Group said the bank is showing significant progress toward a medium-term target of 1 000 sales per day and 1 000 000 clients by 2026. The Bank has also continued to attract high-quality clients, resulting in high levels of average non-interest revenue (NIR) and a low credit loss ratio of 1.56%. However, Discovery Group informed investors that Discovery Bank’s operating loss for the financial year was R990 million,…

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Rider-hailing company Uber has launched a new feature on its platform enabling you to record audio while on a trip in the event of an emergency. Uber is piloting the feature in Pretoria and Johannesburg. The new feature will now allow riders and drivers to use the app to record and share audio of their trip as evidence in case of a safety incident. This is something that drivers have been asking for based on their feedback from roundtable sessions. The new opt-in audio recording feature has been successful in the US and Latin American regions where Uber has a…

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Fixed broadband speeds in South Africa doubled over the past three years – from 15.11 Mbps median download speed in Q1-Q2 2020 to 31.34 Mbps in Q1-Q2 2022, benefiting from increased competition and growth in Fibre to the Home subscriptions, a report by speed test service Ookla revealed on Tuesday. China topped the rankings across the BRICS countries, posting a median download speed of nearly 160 Mbps. South Africa, meanwhile, finished last, indicating that South Africa still has room to grow in terms of fixed broadband performance and adoption. Ookla said Gauteng, home to the country’s largest city, Johannesburg, had the best…

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Johannesburg performed well across the five cities we looked at in terms of median download and upload speeds, a report by speed test service Ookla revealed on Wednesday. Ookla said download speeds in Johannesburg ranged from 25.53 Mbps to 51.49 Mbps, while in Port Elizabeth, speeds were much lower, ranging from 6.36 Mbps to 30.11 Mbps. “Typically fibre networks first reach rich and affluent communities that present a fertile ground for their services. For example, a northern suburb of Johannesburg–Parkhurst–was Vumatel’s first suburb.” Ookla added that across the nine South African provinces, Gauteng is the smallest by land mass, but…

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Cool Ideas is ranked first among South Africa’s Internet Services Providers (ISPs), reaching almost 50 Mbps symmetrical speeds, with a 48.32 Mbps median upload speed and 47.89 Mbps download speed, a report by speed test service Ookla revealed on Tuesday. Afrihost, Webafrica, Vox Telecom, Axxess, and Rain achieved median download speeds in excess of 30 Mbps. Ookla said operator performance in the region could be heavily impacted by the technology offered, with pure fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) provider Cool Ideas topping our rankings. Ookla, which owns and operates the popular speedtest.net Internet speed testing service, published its latest Speedtest Global Index rankings for South Africa for…

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Woolworths reported today a 45.4% surge in online food sales as the retailer benefited from the further rollout of its on-demand online offering. The Woolworths Food business grew turnover and concession sales in the second quarter by 4.6%, with trading momentum improving throughout the period, as Covid-19 base effects eased. Sales for the full year grew by 4.2%, and by 3.1% in comparable stores, reflecting the impact of the high base and the return to out-of-home consumption, an increasingly competitive backdrop, and low product inflation across our key categories. Price movement averaged 3.5% for the full year, with underlying product…

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South African banks will fully transition to digital banking within five years as consumers embrace digitisation. A new report on the future of retail banking drafted by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on behalf of Discovery Bank found that more than two-thirds of South Africans (69%) believe that the country’s banks will transition to a fully digital banking system within five years. The Discovery Bank-BCG survey also found that most South Africans (60%) believe that in just five years, there may be no need for banks to have physical branches. The survey was based on responses from 1,000 consumers from all walks…

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