South Africa’s first Black-owned bank has hit unicorn status, POCIT reports.
Tyme Group, founded in 2019, is majority-owned by billionaire Patrice Motsepe, notes Bloomberg.
The platform was designed to make digital banking more affordable and accessible, and it has been an overwhelming success with online and physical banks throughout South Africa and the Philippines.
According to TechCrunch, it has attracted 10 million users since its inception and reached an additional 5 million users through its Philippine brand, GoTyme. GoTyme allows users to create an account via its bank app. Customers can then receive an ATM debit card instantly and retrieve it at a kiosk.
Tyme Group says it has allocated $600 million in financing to support small businesses and has raised $400 million in customer deposits. Now it is seeking to extend its reach in new markets, which include Vietnam and Indonesia by 2025. This will be made possible in light of a $250 million round led by digital bank Nu Holdings (owner of Nubank), which invested $150 million and has over 100 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, per Bloomberg. Additional investors include M&G’s Catalyst fund and existing investors that contributed another $100 million.
Nu Holdings will now maintain a 10% stake in Tyme Group, per Bloomberg.
“Since the beginning of Nubank, we have believed that the future of financial services globally is of digitally-native companies,” David Vélez, founder and CEO of Nubank, told TechCrunch. “We have met dozens of teams across different geographies, and we think that Tyme Group is extremely well-positioned to be one of the digital bank leaders in Africa and Southeast Asia. We are excited to work with Tyme to share many of our learnings of scaling this model to hundreds of millions of customers.”
What’s more, Tyme Group’s valuation has now reached $1.5 billion, becoming the ninth African company to hit unicorn status, per POCIT.
“The next three to four years, we will be a lot more focused on our customers and on excellence and execution in the market and making sure we get the shape of the business right for listing, which includes making sure that in South Africa we operate the business at the return on equity level above 30%,” Coenraad Jonker, co-founder and CEO of Tyme, told Bloomberg.
