Tyme Group, a South African fintech, has secured $250 million in a Collection D spherical, pushing its valuation to $1.5 billion.
The funding was led by Nu Holdings, which owns Latin America’s most respected fintech Nubank, investing $150 million for a ten% stake.
M&G Catalyst Fund invested $50 million, whereas present shareholders supplied the remaining $50 million.
Based in 2019, Tyme Group operates a hybrid digital banking mannequin that mixes on-line banking with bodily service touchpoints.
The Singaporean-headquartered Tyme focuses on constructing and scaling digital banks in rising markets by providing checking and financial savings accounts with debit playing cards, credit score by way of purchase now, pay later schemes, and money advances. It says it has 15 million clients throughout its two markets of South Africa and the Philippines.
Its South African model, TymeBank, has 10 million customers and has been a key driver of its development. It has 5 million customers of its Philippine model, GoTyme, which it launched in 2022 in partnership with native conglomerate Gokongwei Group to enter Asia.
Tyme claims it has raised over $400 million in buyer deposits and prolonged greater than $600 million in financing to small companies throughout each markets. The fintech plans to increase additional into Vietnam and Indonesia subsequent 12 months.
Nubank’s curiosity outdoors LatAm
Tyme, based by Tjaart van der Walt and chairman Coen Jonker, stays majority owned by Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC), which retains a 40% stake within the firm.
The funding spherical, which takes Tyme’s whole capital raised to almost $600 million, marks a notable restoration in investor curiosity in fintechs after a slowdown brought on partly by rising rates of interest the world over. Tyme joins Nigeria’s Moniepoint as one of many few African fintechs to realize unicorn standing this 12 months.
Tyme is eyeing an IPO in New York by 2028, with plans for a secondary itemizing in South Africa, in keeping with Jonker.
For Nubank, its funding in Tyme aligns with its broader technique to diversify geographically and faucet into the expansion potential of rising markets outdoors Latin America.
Whereas Nubank has cemented itself as a dominant player in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, with over 100 million clients, its core markets have gotten more and more aggressive as rivals like Neon and C6 Financial institution vie for market share.
“For the reason that starting of Nubank, we’ve got believed that the way forward for monetary providers globally is of digitally-native corporations. We have now met dozens of groups throughout totally different geographies, and we predict that Tyme Group is extraordinarily well-positioned to be one of many digital financial institution leaders in Africa and Southeast Asia. We’re excited to work with Tyme to share a lot of our learnings of scaling this mannequin to a whole lot of thousands and thousands of consumers,” says David Vélez, founder and CEO of Nubank.
Tyme isn’t Nubank’s first deal outdoors Latin America. In 2021, the Brazilian fintech invested in the Indian neobank Jupiter.
