How do you build a new bank from scratch? What does it require to take on the big four – Absa, Standard Bank, FNB, and Nedbank – and to win?

In Capitec: Stalking Giants, top-selling business author TJ Strydom tells the gripping tale of a small team of entrepreneurs that, in the early 2000s, turned a small microlending network into a challenger bank.

With their luxurious head offices in Johannesburg, the giants disregard the small Stellenbosch upstart. But once the new bank gains momentum and starts luring droves of customers away from the staid establishment, they are forced to take note.

By opening branches while the other banks are scaling down, focusing on personal interaction while the others are automating, and offering services to those South Africans written off as ‘unprofitable’ by the big four, Capitec bank becomes the biggest success story of the new South Africa.

An inspirational, authentically South African story with a good ending.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TJ Strydom is an author and business journalist who has worked for The Times, Reuters, Sunday Times and Beeld. His first biography, Christo Wiese: Risk & Riches, was published in 2019, followed by Koos Bekker’s Billions in 2022. Strydom grew up in Pietermaritzburg and studied at Stellenbosch University. He is married and lives in Johannesburg.

'Capitec: Stalking Giants' is published by Tafelberg an imprint of NB Publishers