FNB and the Shoprite Group have expanded their partnership by allowing FNB Easy Pay As You Use and Smart Option account holders to replace lost or stolen bank cards in more than 700 Shoprite and Checkers stores across South Africa.

FNB Retail and Private Banking customers can also make free Cash@Till withdrawals at Shoprite and Checkers, with over R5 billion in withdrawals performed in the last financial year alone.

Chief executive of FNB Retail and Private Banking, Raj Makanjee said: “We are on journey to provide real help by making our customers’ lives a lot easier through convenient access to services. More importantly, we are aware of the financial constraints that customers continue to face, including those who hold our Easy bank accounts.

“Earlier this year, we zero-rated prepaid purchases via our App for all individual customers to minimise the financial burden and also reduced a range of fees in addition increasing the value we provide.”

While the adoption of digital payments alternatives like virtual cards and QR Code continues to gain momentum in South Africa, physical cards remain very important for customers.

“Physical bank cards are vital in helping customers manage their money better by minimising reliance on cash, which is expensive to utilise. All our FNB customers have contactless enabled cards, and this contributes significantly to efforts to empower customers with convenient and safer ways to pay.

“The ability to replace a lost or stolen card in-store will provide our customers with much-needed convenience at a point of sale where they do their day-to-day shopping. We also recommend that customers use our digital banking channels such as App to temporarily block or cancel their lost or stolen cards,” said FNB Easy CEO, Philani Potwana.

When a customer acquires their Easy bank card at a Shoprite or Checkers, they can link and activate the card using mobile banking. To activate the card through this channel, the customer can use any mobile phone to dial *120*321#; enter in their secure PIN/ “mo-PIN” and follow the steps to start banking instantly.