(Bloomberg) -- Tyme Group, a digital lender controlled by South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe, raised $250 million in a funding round that made it one of Africa’s few unicorns.
The bank is valued at $1.5 billion after the capital raise, which included a $150 million investment from Latin America’s most valuable financial company, Nu Holdings Ltd.
“It is a unique vote of confidence in our business by the world leaders in our industry, essentially,” Coenraad Jonker, chief executive officer and co-founder of Tyme, said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Nu Holdings’s Nubank is the world’s biggest standalone digital bank, with over 110 million customers across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. “They do not have plans to organically grow into Southeast Asia,” said Jonker, and its investment “is really the bet that they are taking as Nubank in Southeast Asia and Africa.”
M&G’s Catalyst fund also put in $50 million, while existing shareholders invested a further $50 million, Tyme said. Its current backers include Tencent Holdings Ltd., Gokongwei Group, and Norrsken22.
Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital Investments Ltd. will remain Tyme’s lead shareholder with a 40% stake, Jonker said. “Our status as South Africa’s only Black owned and Black controlled commercial bank actually remains in place.”
Tyme is the latest fintech company to pass the $1 billion threshold that marks a unicorn, and highlights recovering investor interest in the sector, after a bumpy few years when interest rates jumped around the world.
Tyme Group is headquartered in Singapore but operates as TymeBank in South Africa, where it has racked up more than 10 million customers, and in the Philippines via a joint venture with Gokongwei Group. The lender has more than 15 million customers across the group, Jonker said.
The lender started offering merchant cash advances in Vietnam in the second quarter, and has signed its first commercial transactions in Indonesia where it recently incorporated, he added. Tyme is also looking at acquisition targets — and is willing to spend tens of millions of dollars — in order to gain an Indonesian banking license, according to the chairman.
“Job number one is to become the top retail bank in the Philippines. The next job is to repeat that in Indonesia,” Jonker said. The digital lender is entering a competitive arena with big incumbents including Bank Mandiri and Bank Rakyat Indonesia, as well as several banks backed by the region’s top tech companies.
The latest fundraise will likely be the last as the lender begins preparations for an initial public offering by the end of 2028.
“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%,” Jonker said.
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