When TymeBank was first introduced in 2019, it was heralded as a challenger to the dominance of the major 5 legacy banks, Standard Bank, First National Bank, ABSA, Nedbank, and Investec.
Now currently, Norrsken22, an African-focused growth-stage fund, and Blue Earth Capital, a Swiss global impact investment company, are leading a $77.8 million pre-Series C round of funding for South Africa's first digital bank.
Digital Banking
Since TymeBank initially entered the market, digital banks have grown in popularity thanks to rivals like Bank Zero and Lula. TymeBank credits its continued customer base growth, which now numbers 7 million active account holders, for its success. The bank employs a mixed strategy of physical and digital services to onboard customers. The Foschini Group, Pick & Pay and Boxer's national network of stores is used as strategic physical infrastructure to set up kiosk to onboard millions of unbanked citizens.
Expecting to grow even more, TymeBank acquired Retail Capital, a fintech company that has provided over R5 billion in working capital to more than 43,000 business owners in South Africa. This acquisition is to enable the bank to move into the business banking market.
Digital Banks seem to be gaining serious market share due to their simplistic, paperless process in opening an account. TymeBank uses a cloud-based infrastructure network that makes it possible to open an account in less than 5 minutes. Sending money to any cellphone in South Africa using the Banks SendMoney app takes about 9 seconds.
Investors
Patrice Motsepe, the president of the Confederation of African Football, owns a majority stake in TymeBank through his investment company, African Rainbow Capital. Tencent, who was the lead investor in the Banks $70 million Series B funding round, increased its shareholding in the pre-Series C round, to become Bank’s third-largest shareholder.
TymeBank, however, is not a native company of South Africa. It is a member of the Tyme Group of companies headquartered in Singapore. The holding company, Tyme, focuses on creating, constructing and running digital banks for emerging economies. Tyme's brand in South Africa is TymeBank, and its first market in Asia, the Philippines, where the fintech company launched GoTyme last October in collaboration with the Gokongwei Group, is Tyme.