In the race among retailers to break into the financial services industry, Pick 'n Pay will be launching a savings plan within two months with other investment products to follow rapidly.
This comes hot on the heels of Shoprite/Checkers which recently launched a funeral insurance product through its outlets, in association with Old Mutual and the HT Group.
The Pick 'n Pay savings plan will fill a market niche, which banks have found tedious, for customers with medium to low end-of-month balances. It is believed that the plan will be offering very favourable interest rates.
Paperwork associated with opening accounts has been reduced to a minimum and transactions will be conducted on ATMs or by phone.
The banking and supermarket operations will be administered separately , although customers will be able to do their banking through any Pick 'n Pay store.
The product has been researched for well over a year in an attempt to make banking as effortless as possible.
The new savings plan will be the latest in the range of banking products offered by Pick 'n Pay which already has a store card, a debit card and a third party payments system, which allows customers to pay their electricity and municipal accounts at Pick 'n Pay cashiers.
It is believed that a further two products are in the pipeline a unit trust- based product and possibly one in the category of fixed deposits.