Your money still not save at Capitec

The Capitec saga still continues.

I received inter alia the following response:

“Upon investigation, it has been identified that the transactions in question align with activities initiated from your account. As a result, we want to emphasize that the bank cannot be held liable for these specific transactions. We understand that errors can happen, and we appreciate your cooperation in bringing this to our attention. In light of this, we encourage you to continue following safe banking practices and remain vigilant against potential *****sters. Regularly monitoring your account activity, promptly reporting any unauthorized transactions, and safeguarding your personal information are crucial steps in ensuring the security of your financial accounts.”

So in summary, they are putting the blame of those *****ulent transactions on me for two reasons: I initiated them (irrespective of me informing them from the beginning I didn't) and I took too long to report the *****ulent activity.

The Capitec account in question is my savings account. I only do electronic fund transfers from this account, and am not using the card at shops, garages or other places, including online transactions. To test the process of online transactions I tried a payment last week and found that I had to confirm the transaction before it could proceed – although the transaction was rejected because of my account settings. So nobody outside of Capitec should have my card or even account details, whereas I pay into that account from my ABSA current account. I'm not receiving moneys from others into this account either. Furthermore, I never did any transaction with a company identified as Haulmer Constructora L RA L AGO CL on the statement. So in the light of the above the statement that “the transactions in question align with activities initiated from your account” is so far from the truth that it can be called a blatant lie. I did not make an error in this regard, Capitec allowed these transactions to occur without any initiation from my side and without any consent or approval from my side. It is clear that Capitec, and Capitec only can be blamed that these transactions occurred.

The second point they mention is the promptly reporting of unauthorised transactions. On this point Capitec changed from SMS notifications to in-app notifications by default earlier this year. When I updated the app after I had changed back the notifications to SMS, the app again modified it to in-app notifications. Now these notifications only work whilst the app is open. So if you don't open the app because you have no banking transactions to do, notifications can lie in the app indefinitely until such time you use the app again. This is what also happened with me, as 7 transactions were done by the above mentioned company without me getting notified about it. I have more to do than opening my banking app three time a day to check whether there are any notifications. So again, taking so long before the ***** was reported was caused by Capitec changing by default the SMS notifications to In-app notifications. With the last update I checked, and now the update seems to remember your previous settings.

The reporting of the ***** also took almost a day on Capitec's WhatsUp system. I reported it in the evening immediately after discovering same receiving no response. I discovered the next day that Capitec responded somewhere in the middle of the night, when I was asleep. There was an option to continue the chat stream, which I did. Again no response for quite some time, a response came through a few hours later when my phone was on silent as I was in a meeting. Again continuing the chat, a response at last came through in which I again reported the *****, on which my card was cancelled and I was requested to go to a branch and get a new card, which I did the next day. I was also promised an investigation into the matter.

As I did not initiate those *****ulent transactions and nobody outside the bank should have had my card or accoiunt details there in my opinion are only two possibilities of these transactions occurring, namely:

1. A Capitec inside job; or 2. The Capitec system was hacked from outside and I was one of more victims from which money was pulled into the hackers account(s).

The values involved being different but near to each other makes me come to the conclusion some international hacker(s) deducted the equivalent of about $25 five times, and lesser amounts with the last two transactions.

Which still confirms my conclusion: Your money is still not safe at Capitec, even if you yourself follow safe banking practices.

To bank your money safer, if you want to continue with Capitec, one has to:

1. Switch on SMS notifications; 2. Switch off International transactions; and 3. Switch off Online transations.

In the light of the fact that it is already taking more than 4 months in getting my losses reimbursed by Capitec, in may be safer to move one's money to another bank... as their systems seem to be hackable at your cost.