Coen Jonker wants his customers to bank where they do their shopping.
The founder and group CEO of TymeBank believes such “embedded finance” is the future of banking. “We are creating a new front door to banking.”
It appears to be working. Launched in 2019, TymeBank has 6.2-million customers who make an average of 23-million transactions a month. About 70% are active, with their accounts in a 30-day cycle, and the bank is signing up an average of 188,000 new customers every month. In December it recorded R100m in net operating income, Jonker says.
TymeBank’s black-and-yellow kiosks have been providing embedded banking at Pick n Pay and Boxer stores for the past four years.
Its investors are as impressive as its growth. Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital is its majority shareholder, while other investors include WeChat owner Tencent, CDC Group, Apis Growth Fund II, JG Summit Holdings, African Fig Tree Investments and the Ethos AI Fund.
In October, TFG struck a deal with the bank to set up the kiosks.
“This is a big deal for us,” says Jonker. “I don’t see why we can’t give every one of TFG’s 30-million customers a TymeBank account.”
I don’t see why we can’t give every one of TFG’s 30-million customers a TymeBank account
— Coen Jonker
The tie-up nearly doubles TymeBank’s distribution reach. TFG stores have 600 of its kiosks that help first-time users to sign up. The TymeBank TFG Money account has no monthly fees, no paperwork and takes five minutes to initiate.
The TFG kiosks take the bank’s total to 1,450. These kiosks complement its zero-ATM model of providing cash deposits and withdrawals via the tills at Pick n Pay and Boxer.
Jonker says this equates to 15,000 cash points, and TymeBank now has a network rivalling those of the big banks.
“In February we’ll be four years old and in our first four years we’ve grown faster than the leading emerging-market digital bank in the world, Nubank from Brazil,” he says.
The secret, he believes, is this “new front door” approach. “We’re bringing the bank to the customers. We really believe that a bank that is able to come to you, as opposed to you having to go to the bank, is the future,” Jonker says.
Being able to make payments or check statements at any time, from anywhere there is an online connection, seems passé now but not long ago it was revolutionary
This logic fuelled first internet banking and then app-based banking on smartphones, which have become the default methods for most of us. Being able to make payments or check statements at any time, from anywhere there is an online connection, seems passé now but not long ago it was revolutionary.
The TymeBank kiosks fulfil the “sales and service function” of a branch, says Jonker, and 80% of the bank’s clients have used them to sign up for their account.
The appeal for TFG is that the partnership means it doesn’t need to apply for a banking licence and try to build a bank itself. Describing it as a “great fit between our brands, our goals, and the way we work”, Scott Brown, TFG’s MD of value-added services, says it aligns with the retailer’s “goal of driving financial inclusion”.
TymeBank recently began offering a buy-now, pay-later loan called MoreTyme. This interest-free loan has no fees over a three-month period and must be paid back in three equal instalments.
The neobank has also finalised its R1.5bn acquisition of Retail Capital, which focuses on lending to small businesses. It has lent R7bn in working capital to about 50,000 businesses over the past 10 years. The bank has also expanded to the Philippines — using the GOTyme brand — under former TymeBank CEO Tauriq Keraan.
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