TymeBank, the emerging lender backed by Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital, announced on Thursday that it had signed up 4-million customers since its launch in February 2019.
The bank, which has partnerships with retailers TFG and Pick n Pay and Boxer stores, as well as the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), dubs itself the one of the world’s fastest-growing digital banks. TymeBank says its customer acquisition rate has increased to 140,000 a month at present, up from the 110,000 it said it was signing up each month as recently as early October.
“We are pleased to have achieved a 4-million customer base within about 32 months,” said TymeBank CEO Tauriq Keraan. “We’ve expanded our offering and enhanced product functionality to ensure we can give customers everything they need in a single banking account, while empowering them to pay nothing — or next to nothing — on banking fees, depending on their banking behaviour. The acceleration in customer growth tells us we’re on the right track.”
The challenger bank, which is vying with other digital upstarts such as Discovery Bank and Bank Zero for a greater share of SA’s retail banking market, says its retail partnership model has been an integral part of its rapid growth. In early October it announced that it had struck a deal with TFG to roll out 600 TymeBank kiosks in 2022 across the retail group’s 4,200 stores, which include Sportscene, Markham, @home and Foschini.
TymeBank says more than 80% of its new accounts are now being opened at its retail kiosks with just less than 20% being opened online compared with about 15% in April. Even so it says SA customers are rapidly warming to online banking as their trust in the digital platforms grows, a factor that has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In February 2021 TymeBank said it would replicate its business model in the Philippines after it raised about R1.6bn in series-B funding from investors, a portion of which came from conglomerate JG Summit which has a retail presence of about 4,000 stores in the Asian nation. Its business in the Philippines will trade under the banner GOtyme, which said in August that its digital banking licence application had been approved by that country’s central bank.
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