Pepkor Holdings, Africa’s largest seller of clothing and mobile phones, is recruiting a banking chief to lead the rollout of full transactional banking services across its network of more than 2,500 South African stores. According to Bloomberg, a job posting dated 11 March described the position as one that demands an entrepreneurial disposition, a grounding in retail banking, and the capacity to execute large-scale strategic change — placing the incoming executive at the centre of the group’s push to become a fully integrated transactional bank.
The Cape Town-based retailer received regulatory clearance from the South African Reserve Bank’s Prudential Authority last year to establish a banking presence, and followed that approval with the acquisition of Cloudbadger, a South African fintech software platform that will underpin the venture’s technology architecture. Pepkor’s retail network already exceeds 5,000 stores nationally — larger than the combined branch networks of Capitec, Standard Bank, Absa and Nedbank — and the group processes more than two million money transfers, four million bill payments, and 22 million cash withdrawals every month, giving it an operational base that most new banking entrants would take years to replicate. Revenue at its fintech division rose 31% to R16.6 billion in the year through September 2025, accounting for 17% of group sales.
In December 2025, Pepkor also appointed Richard Wainwright to its board as an independent non-executive director. Wainwright served as chief executive of Investec Bank for just over eight years until 2024, and his appointment signals the seriousness of the group’s banking ambitions. The venture, expected to trade as Pep Bank, would operate from within existing discount retail stores, allowing branches to be opened at pace and at low cost — passing savings directly to customers and bypassing the capital-intensive branch-build model that has hampered previous new entrants.
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Pepkor’s primary target is the low-income and unbanked segment: South Africans without formal bank accounts or those considered underserved by traditional lenders. It enters this space at a moment when several retailers are moving in the same direction. Shoprite, the country’s largest grocer, has been scaling its Money Market product with lower-income customers in mind, including those reliant on government social grants. The grocer has amassed valuable consumer spending data through its loyalty programme — an asset with direct relevance to credit assessment, product design, and customer retention in a banking context.
That same demographic has long been the engine behind Capitec’s rise. Capitec’s primary customer base earns between R5,000 and R40,000 per month — an income band that maps directly onto Pep Bank’s intended market. Capitec now serves more than 25 million clients, accounting for over half of South Africa’s adult population, and holds 880 branches alongside the country’s largest ATM network. Its dominance in the grant-recipient and lower-income segment has been central to its commercial success, and analysts believe that Pepkor’s entry — alongside Shoprite and newer institutions such as OM Bank — poses a genuine competitive challenge to Capitec and to established players more broadly. South Africa’s banking sector generated R140 billion in profit in the 12 months to December 2024, and holds assets in excess of R10 trillion, making it a prize worth competing for.
Pepkor’s position is not without structural advantages. With 32 million known customers across its retail brands, it holds a depth of consumer data that could support tailored lending and product development from day one. By embedding Pep Bank within stores that lower-income South Africans already visit regularly, the group is betting that earned trust — built over decades in discount retail — will translate into financial services adoption at a scale that conventional banks and digital challengers alike have struggled to achieve.
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