Bank safer with Contact Lock

We’ve launched a smart new app feature that keeps your money safe from one of the fastest-growing scams in South Africa – without changing the way you bank.

Scammers are using increasingly advanced tricks to get hold of your banking information.

One of the latest tactics is approaching you in public and pretending to offer something – like free like airtime, vouchers or competitions. They may ask you to use your phone, open your banking app and take an innocent-looking selfie to ‘claim your prize’. But behind the scenes they’re collecting your personal information to activate your app on their phone.

What is Contact Lock

Contact Lock is our latest app security feature that verifies that your app is being activated on a trusted device.

It uses advanced device fingerprinting to create a unique identity for your app, making it almost impossible for scammers to install it on their phone, even if they have your details.

“This is just the start of how we’re using secure fingerprinting to keep you safe from baddies,” says Ravindren Govender, Head of Digital at Capitec.

“Clients can have peace of mind knowing that this additional layer of security makes it significantly harder for fraudsters to take over their app,” he adds.

How Contact Lock works

• You select a few trusted contacts from your device
• These contacts are encrypted and stored securely as part of your phone’s unique digital identity
• The app uses secure hashing to scramble your contact information into a one-way code that can’t be read or reversed – not even by us. This ensures your contacts remain private and protected
• When someone tries to activate your app on another device, the app compares the encrypted contacts on that device to your stored fingerprint
• If they don’t match, Contact Lock triggers additional security checks to prevent scammers from accessing your account

Even if scammers get hold of your information, they’ll hit a dead end because the app won’t activate without your phone’s unique digital fingerprint.

How to activate Contact Lock

1. Sign in on our app
2. Tap the profile icon in the top left corner
3. Tap My security centre
4. Toggle the Contact Lock slider to the right
5. Tap Continue and follow the on-screen prompts
6. Tap Ok to confirm – your unique device identity will be created

How to reactivate your app

If you previously enabled Contact Lock and need to reactivate your app on a new phone:

• If the contacts match your stored digital identity, reactivation continues as normal
• If the contacts don’t match or access is denied, a security delay will apply before your access is restored

If you haven’t enabled Contact Lock yet, you can reactivate your app as usual.

How to disable Contact Lock

1. Sign in on our app
2. Tap My security centre
3. Toggle the Contact Lock slider to the left
4. After 4 hours, you’ll be asked to verify your identity with a selfie
5. Once verified, Contact Lock will be disabled