GoTyme targets South Africa’s top retail-banking spot by 2036

GoTyme Bank is stepping up its challenge of Capitec as it seeks to become South Africa’s biggest lender by customers in the next decade.

It became Africa’s first profitable standalone digital bank this year and has 13 million clients, making it the nation’s second biggest by that metric. It’s targeting 30 million by 2036.

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“I want us to get to one in two South Africans as customers,” Chief Executive Officer Cheslyn Jacobs said in an interview.

Capitec had more than 26.6 million personal and business clients as of August 31. GoTyme is banking on its partnership with the continent’s largest insurer, Sanlam, that will allow both companies to take deposits, and provide unsecured personal loans as well as life cover as soon as next year.

“Sanlam has what we believe is the best-in-market banking proposition to sell into their 9 million customers, and we believe we’ve got a leading insurance proposition to sell into our 13 million customers,” Jacobs said. “Its a win-win relationship for both businesses.”

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Sanlam has said it expects 2 million to 4 million banking clients by 2030 and sees its loan book growing to R10 billion ($600 million), from R6 billion in 2025.

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GoTyme, which launched to the public in 2019, is also keeping a close eye on Pepkor Holdings, Africa’s largest clothing and mobile-phone retailer, which is preparing to launch an independent lender as early as next year.

Pepkor plans to use its more than 6,000 South African stores to support the digital bank, combining retail footfall, device distribution and financial services on a single platform.

“They are the largest reseller of value-added services in the country, they sell a million smartphones a month, so they are sitting on a captive base,” Jacobs said. “They’ve got distribution, they know who their customer is, they serve them really well in their core business, so you have to assume that they’ll do something very similar with their banking services.”

GoTyme is majority owned by billionaire Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital Investments. The group as a whole signs about 400,000 new clients per month, and has more than 23 million customers in South Africa and the Philippines, where it runs a joint venture with the Gokongwei Group. It’s also backed by China’s Tencent Holdings and has operations in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore.

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GoTyme’s global operations were valued $1.5 billion in 2024 after a fundraising round that included a $150 million investment from one of Latin America’s most valuable financial company, Nu Holdings.

While GoTyme is still working toward a future listing, market conditions will determine the timing and valuation, Jacobs said. The lender’s watermark is a valuation above $15 billion, he said, without disclosing its current standing.

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“The business has to be in a certain state before you do a listing,” he said. “Our business is showing that it can grow year on year, as long as we continue hitting the milestones we set for ourselves, we will probably be ready in three to five years.”

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