Digital bank based in South Africa time Achieved unicorn status with the help of FinTech colleagues Nubank.
company announced On Tuesday (December 17), the company announced that it had raised $250 million in a Series D funding round, valuing it at $1.5 billion. Tyme's investors include Nubank, a Brazil-based digital lender with 110 million members.
Tyme, whose TymeBank has more than 15 million customers across South Africa and the Philippines, says the partnership with Nubank will give it the expertise and resources to expand its presence in the market.
“Nubank has transformed financial services in Brazil.” Cohen Jonkersaid Time Group founder and CEO in a news release.
“We are excited about the value Nubank’s thought partnership and advice can bring to Tyme, particularly in areas such as data analytics, credit risk management, product development and marketing. This is a critical moment for Time, which we believe is the key to achieving leadership in our market. ”
Founder and CEO of Nubank david berres He said the investment is part of the company's belief that digitally native companies are the future of financial services.
“We have met with dozens of teams across different regions and believe Time Group is very well positioned to be the leader in digital banking in Africa and Southeast Asia,” Velez said in the announcement. I mentioned it inside. “We are excited to work with Tyme and share the many things we have learned in scaling this model to hundreds of millions of customers.”
The $250 million raised in this round is far higher than the $150 million the company was targeting when it announced its Series D earlier this year. Jonker said at the time that Time Inc. wanted to go public in the U.S. by 2028, with a secondary listing on the Johannesburg market.
Last year, Time Inc. raised $77 million in a round aimed at expanding its presence in South Africa and the Philippines.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS recently wrote about the challenges facing so-called “challenger banks” that have enjoyed a wave of fundraising this year.
“However, there are some signs that challengers are still fine-tuning at least some aspects of their business models while growth remains rapid,” the report said. “Fraud and anti-money laundering (AML) concerns have led to increased regulatory scrutiny, particularly in the UK.”
Two of the country's emerging banks, Starling Bank and Metrobank, were fined multi-million pounds this year for poor AML/financial crime controls.
According to research from the PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Digital Banking: The Brewing Battle of Where to Bank,” 25% of consumers say data security is one of the main reasons they haven’t moved to digital-only banking services. I'm answering.
