South Africa’s Digital Bank; Tyme Bank has raised $109 million from investors. The Digital Bank is owned by African Rainbow Capital (ARC) and revealed recently that it has been able to raise the sum of $109 million from its investors. The Digital bank is similar to Nigeria’s Kuda Digital Bank which raised the sum of $10 million from investors a few months ago. Tyme Bank’s recent investment figures is the largest raised in the whole of Africa by a digital bank from investors.
The Digital Bank’s investors are Apis Growth Fund II; a private equity fund managed by Apis Partners and JG Summit Holdings; one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines. The digital bank revealed in a statement that, ‘both these investments are experienced in financial services in emerging markets. Apis is a private equity asset manager that supports growth stage financial services and financial infrastructure businesses’.
Tyme Bank already has acquired the impressive sum of 2.8 million customers and is projecting that by March this year, it should have 3 million customers. It is reported that the bank grows by an enviable 100,000 customers every month. Juxtaposing these figures with those of other digital banks already existing in Africa like Kuda and Rubies, it can be said without any doubt that Tyme Bank may be Africa’s fastest growing, as well as Africa’s biggest digital bank.
Tyme Bank is very similar with Kuda in terms of propositions and strategies. The bank, just like Kuda offers free transfers as well as no cost for other transactions that customers would normally have to pay for when using these services on traditional banks. The digital bank will augment this ‘no fee’ strategy to go into other aspects of banking such as insurance, lending and retail banking.
The bank already put in place plans last year to offer customers unsecured loans but the corona virus pandemic stopped the bank from going ahead with its plans. The bank has recently launched partnerships with NWJ and Pick n Pay, on its new MoreTyme program.
MoreTyme enables customers to find items and pay for them with MoreTyme vouchers. Then customers are given 30-60 days to pay the bank back. This kind of funding will create an enabling environment for Tyme Bank as well as increase its revenue. The digital bank has already received the sum of $34 million from its investors while the rest of the $75 million will be released to the bank over the time frame of 12-15 months from now.
