TymeBank hits 10m customer milestone

A new app and more strategic partnerships are also in the pipeline.

TymeBank, the digital bank controlled by South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital, now boasts 10 million customers

The bank confirmed this in a statement on Tuesday, adding that it has close to R7 billion in customer deposits and has disbursed more than R12 billion to over 80 000 small businesses in South Africa.

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Read:  Karl Westvig to head up TymeBank

TymeBank was launched in 2019.

The acquisition of fintech company Retail Capital, which provides funding to small and medium-sized businesses in South Africa in late 2022, has been a gamechanger and integral to the development of the bank’s SME lending offering, the group notes.

Karl Westvig, who officially takes over the reins as CEO of TymeBank today (1 October 2024), said that among the bank’s most significant achievements was to “break even, arguably in record time”.

The bank reached profitability in December 2023 under former CEO and co-founder Coenraad Jonker. Jonker has been appointed executive chair of the Tyme Group, which is currently valued at close to $1 billion (around R17 billion).

TymeBank says its so-called ‘phygital’ operating model, which integrates digital banking into physical retail outlets through partnerships with Pick n Pay, Boxer, and more recently TFG, allows it to optimise its distribution network.

Looking ahead

The bank’s immediate priorities include a new banking app to attract a more affluent customer segment, while broadening its offering through more strategic partnerships.

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It has also entered the consumer lending space and is using AI tools to predict a customer’s creditworthiness through monitoring patterns such as grocery spend. “This is a key pillar for the bank’s personal loan proposition,” it notes.

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Tyme Group will also enter Indonesia later in October, after launching GoTyme Bank in the Philippines in October 2022 and entering Vietnam earlier this year.

In addition, it is preparing for a public listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2028.

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