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It was a tough choice between Discovery Bank and FNB, because I have posted before asking about ebucks and we have quite a few threads about it. I did set out to open an FNB account, but had endless hassles online and it ultimately required me to go into a branch so they are out - I do not want to rely on a branch in 2020 for banking. I then decided oh well let's give Discovery Bank a try, maybe I get a good deal from Virgin Active from this exercise, because make no mistake they (Discovery) are the most expensive bank in SA. Here is a link to all the accounts available on Discovery. If you read this thread, pop over to this FNB vs Discovery Bank thread first to see some of the pros and cons of each and whilst you are at it there is a great thread about FNB's Ebucks as well to give further insight in what is available in the South African banking landscape today in terms of rewards and loyalty programs. Anyway to get back to the point I'll try to write this the same as I did for the How to open a TymeBank Bank Account thread. Speaking of Tymebank to open a Discovery Bank account was relatively straight forward, but nothing compares to Tymebank that process is smooth and quick it took me less than 5 minutes to open a Tymebank account, it took about an hour fiddling with files and setting up syncing etc to get everything ready for the FICA process of Discovery, I will get to that in a moment. How to open a Discovery Bank Account Step 1: Register on this page (it won't work if you go straight to the app, you'll sit in a queue) - where the button says leave your details, fill that in. You will then receive instructions with a formatting issue telling you to go login on the app. Step 2: Download the Discovery Bank app and then login using the ID Number you registered with in Step 1. Step 3: Follow the instructions to FICA your account and you are done. When you do Step 3 they will ask you for various documents which you need to upload from your phone (there is no website just an app) this means you need to make sure those files are on your phone. In my case I logged on to Rawson on the PC and downloaded my latest Invoice and Lease Agreement. I then uploaded that to dropbox and I then downloaded and synced dropbox with my phone, but the Discovery App cannot access dropbox, so you need to go to dropbox on your phone and then "export" the pdfs to your phone (save it to the device) then it should sit in your phone's download folder, you can then through the Discovery Bank app navigate to your downloads folder and upload the files. I did the same for my Capitec bank statements. I logged into Capitec on the website and then downloaded the last 3 months worth of bank statements and then synced it to my phone through dropbox and exported it to enable Discovery's app to access it. Once that schlep is done you should get an SMS and E-mail to welcome you. I received a call from the courier company about 3 hours later confirming my delivery address, because they will deliver your Discovery Credit Card to you. There is the option for you to collect it as well, but I am paying them R400 per month so I ticked the "deliver it" option even though the bank's office is down the road - sorry, not sorry. Notes: There is ZERO website - I do not know what on earth they are thinking and I am not a predictions man, but I am fairly sure South Africa is not ready for a "App only" bank not in Infrastructure to make that happen and most certainly not in education and access (expensive data, limited coverage and cost of beefy "capable of driving a bloated banking app" phones.) Besides the "infrastructure" shortfall there is also the compromise angle - Alternatives exist so why would I want to use the app to pull and print statements when I can log onto Capitec or FNB on the website and do a lot more administrative tasks more efficiently. This comes back to earlier about Tymebank, they are an App based bank, but when you want to make use of power features and do administrative tasks the website is there and your PC is connected to the printer and have excel on it to pull your CSVs into - Goodluck trying to do that with discovery without going through a whole process between devices and using third party apps to sync it all. Like @SimonPB would say "make no bones about it" this app only approach will make it more difficult for less technologically-adept customers to print out bank statements and facilitate transactions. Concerns: I found quite a few formatting issues and some bugs (screen would freeze if you navigate between transactions and pay) I reported this to them, but have not gotten anything back and they don't respond to it on twitter either. Normally that won't bother me, but if you are going to be an expensive bank without any physical presence then I expect you to be around 24 / 7. The app is also sluggish, but I suspect that is due to latency since it appears they use AWS as well. Overall my entire experience with Discovery Banking so far is perfectly summed up by @Bandit With that said one thing I am excited about (as a Discovery shareholder) is the fact that Discovery (JSE DSY) now have a key insight into all aspects of our lives from health and insurance all the way to banking. This should in theory put Discovery in a position to do incredibly advance psychometric analysis on its users and map psychological traits for risk evaluation. As someone with a very keen interest in behavioral psychology this aspect fascinates me especially when it comes to credit facilities because with the transactional banking data Discovery can now create a far more accurate risk assessment based on who you really are not what you have done in the past. Bonus: Here's some screenshots of the app

So it's that time of the year again. I'm bored and prone to messing around with something that works. Buying a house wrecked my saving powers for a bit now I'm fortunate enough to top up my TFSA for the year. I already missed out on making any contributions last year because of said house and really didn't want a repeat. So with everything back on track I log into EasyEquities to take a good look at what my account is doing. I knew it was doing well but it is still nice to see a portfolio with everything in the green. Just goes to show: like nature conservation, time plus less human contact is about the best thing you can do for your investments. With that being said, let's change things! (I'm an anarchist). Over the last few years I moved everything to offshore ETFs. Considering my house, RA and pension all being very much exposed to SA I think it is a good idea to get maximum offshore exposure with your other investments. Currently it looks like this: CSP500 (stopped contributing to it in favour of STXWDM) STXWDM STXNDQ (30%) Knowing very well what I just said about international exposure, I thought about introducing PTXTEN back into the mix. CoreShares will amalgamate this and PTXSPY into a new ETF in the near future (not exactly sure of the date) and the changes they are making looks good to me. There's also the ETF5IT ETF from Stanlib which looks more tech concentrated than STXNDQ and maybe it is worth investing in GLODIV instead of STXWDM (the reason: although not a lot, it does pay some dividends and performance is not that far off the MSCI World). It is not heavy on tech stocks at all but STXNDQ/ETF5IT makes up for that. I can sell everything in my TFSA, start again and come up with something like this: PTXTEN / SA Property - 30% GLODIV / Offshore - 45% EFT5IT / Tech - 25% But because I may not want to incur extra cost for selling off (too many) funds in place of others, maybe something like this makes more sense: STXWDM (freeze it) and start contributing the GLODIV PTXTEN (in favour of the CSP500 already in there) STXNDQ (freeze it) and start contributing to EFT5IT ....told you it was the silly season

Your timing is impeccable! PTXTEN usually declares their 3rd quarter dividend on or around 4 October, to be paid out in the middle of the month. So you can expect a nice bonus from the ETF later in the month! In fact, I've received over R1000 dividends from PTXTEN already in my TFIA this year,. It's a lovely feeling seeing that much money just suddenly appear in your account out of nowhere!

I love my PTXTEN ETF! The dividends are fantastic at 9.4% per annum (currently), and with the new changes, I'm hoping for excellent growth as well. I wouldn't be surprised in this one gives the best total return of all over the next few years. Plus, it has never been this cheap to invest in property! On top of that, the massive dividends are completely tax free, making this particular ETF one of the best ETFs on the market in terms of tax savings. GLODIV is a really nice ETF too, but i think it is better outside of a TFIA as the foreign dividends are not tax exempt. If it were up to me me, I'd stick with STXWDM.

Nice. Could use something new in the top 40

Hi janvdwest I'm not a tax expert, but the way I understand the tax on trading is as follows: When buying or selling a share, you first pay brokerage and Strate fees (which are not taxes), and VAT is levied on these costs. The first direct tax you pay is the securities transfer tax of 0.25% which is levied on every transfer of a security. When you sell a share at a higher price that you bought it for, only the profit is considered to be capital gains (not the whole proceeds of the sale). The first R40,000 of capital gains you make per year is exempt from tax. Any capital gains above R40,000 is taxed at 18% p.a. for individuals and 22.4% p.a. for companies. When a South African company pays a dividend, it withholds tax of 20% on the dividend that it pays (not 15% as you mentioned in your post - that was increased in 2017). When an individual receives the dividend from a South African company, it is exempt from tax, because the tax has already been withheld and paid over to SARS by the company paying the dividend. There is no VAT on dividend income. Income earned from REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) is not considered as dividends and there is no withholding tax on these. However, this income should be declared as income on your annual income tax return and will be taxed along with your overall assessment according to your normal tax bracket in the same way as if you rented a property out yourself. When you finally dispose of your REITs, then any profit made from the difference between the selling and buying price of the REITs is considered a capital gain, taxed at 18% p.a. for individuals and 22.4% p.a. for companies (also subject to the R40,000 exemption for total capital gains per year). Then, finally, dividends, income and capital gains earned within a tax free investment account are exempt from all of the above taxes (except for VAT on brokerage and strate fees, of course).