On Saturday I open a Capitec account. I took care at observing everything from the staff, floor layout, IT equipment floor size and amount of people passing through while I waited. Afterwards I walked passed a Nedbank branch ten times the size, elaborate interior, fancy dressed staff standing around waiting to help clients, security guards, extensive IT equipment. I came to the simple conclusion that the barriers to Capitec's business model are much more complex then most people think. How will a bank like Nedbank ever be able to complete in that space? Will they cut staff; reduce products to a handful, downgrade to a simple and much smaller office floor layout? Will they introduce low cost accounts, but retaining hundreds of other products and exclude wealthier clients from getting access to the cheaper ones? My conclusion - the big four banks were caught off guard. The will never be able to compete in this space in any kind of offering that is on par with Capitec, without losing millions in the process. All can say is this is going to become very interesting. In the meantime, I earning anything from 7%- 5% interest on my savings account and after 18 years as a banking client am now only paying for what I use and not being used as a cow to cross subsidize products I will never use.