Tyme Group, a South African-born fintech working within the African nation and the Philippines, has secured $250 million in a Series D spherical, pushing its valuation to $1.5 billion. The funding was led by Nu Holdings (which owns NuBank), Latin America’s most respected fintech, which invested $150 million for a 10% stake. M&G Catalyst Fund chipped in $50 million whereas present shareholders offered the remaining $50 million.
Founded in 2019, the Singapore-headquartered Tyme Group operates a hybrid digital banking mannequin that mixes on-line banking with bodily service touchpoints.
Tyme focuses on constructing and scaling digital banks in rising markets by providing checking and financial savings accounts with debit playing cards and credit score through purchase now, pay later, and money advances. It serves 15 million prospects throughout two markets. Its South African model, TymeBank, which has 10 million customers, has been a key driver of its development. GoTyme within the Philippines—launched in 2022 in partnership with native conglomerate Gokongwei Group—marked its entry into Asia and has 5 million customers.
Across each markets, Tyme claims to have raised over $400 million in buyer deposits and prolonged greater than $600 million in finance to small companies.
The fintech, based by chairman Coen Jonker, plans to increase additional into Vietnam and Indonesia subsequent 12 months.
Tyme stays majority-owned by Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC), which retains a 40% stake within the fintech. Last 12 months, the fintech raised $77.eight million in a pre-Series C spherical, backed by Tencent, Blue Earth Capital, and Norrsken22.
The newest funding, which takes Tyme’s whole increase to almost $600 million, marks a notable restoration in investor curiosity in fintechs after a slowdown attributable to rising international rates of interest. Tyme joins Nigeria’s Moniepoint as one of many African fintechs to attain unicorn standing this 12 months.
Clearly, Nubank’s funding in Tyme Group aligns with its broader technique to diversify geographically and faucet into the expansion potential of rising markets outdoors Latin America, albeit not organically.
While the most important digital banking platform has cemented itself as a dominant participant in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, with over 100 million prospects, its core markets have gotten more and more aggressive as rivals like Neon and C6 Bank aggressively vie for market share.
Expanding, through investments, into Asia and Africa—areas the place digital monetary providers are nonetheless underpenetrated—provides Nubank an opportunity to see an identical playbook play out in markets with comparable dynamics: giant unbanked populations, rising smartphone adoption, and rising demand for accessible monetary merchandise.
“Since the beginning of Nubank, we have believed that the future of financial services globally is of digitally-native companies. 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 South East Asia. We are excited to work with Tyme to share many of our learnings of scaling this model to hundreds of millions of customers,” says David Vélez, founder and CEO of Nubank.
Tyme isn’t Nubank’s first deal outdoors its house turf, although. In 2021, the Brazilian fintech invested within the Indian neobank Jupiter.
