A loaf of bread for 99 cents sounds like a supermarket special. It is actually a banking strategy. From 1 July, FNB is extending its popular 99-cent bread reward, until now available only at Pick n Pay, to Boxer stores across the country
How it works
Qualifying customers on FNB's entry-level accounts, Easy, Aspire and Prime Life, simply shop in-store at Boxer, and from the following week they can claim up to four loaves at 99 cents each. Each loaf is worth about R11, so four a month is roughly R44 back in your pocket, enough, the bank points out, to wipe out a month's account fees for someone paying R30 to R50. It builds on a perk that has run with Pick n Pay since September 2024, over which time FNB has handed out 6.3 million discounted loaves.
Bread as a banking weapon
So why does a bank care about bread? Pieter Woodhatch, who runs FNB's eBucks rewards programme, says the aim is to become the main bank for lower-income customers by giving them value they can actually feel. Boxer is the key: its stores reach townships and small towns where Pick n Pay is thinner on the ground, opening up a customer base FNB hasn't reached as well before. The tactic seems to be working. By May, one in five eligible customers were claiming their loaves each month, and in some parts of the country the figure was as high as one in two.
The bread is only one weapon. The wider FNB and Pick n Pay partnership, which also includes a Burger Friday deal redeemed 6.2 million times and up to 30% back on Pick n Pay's online shopping, has handed customers more than R600 million in rewards in a single year, with the 99-cent bread alone accounting for around R70 million of that. "This partnership has been a game changer for customer rewards," says Pick n Pay chief executive Sean Summers. FNB's own boss, Lytania Johnson, frames it as reimagining how banking can support people in their everyday lives. The bet is simple: give people something real at the till, and they will bank with you for everything else.
