A big part of GoTyme Bank’s DNA is Tyme. The first syllable of the brand name “GoTyme” refers to the Gokongwei group of companies, one of the biggest and most successful conglomerates in the Philippines. The second syllable refers to Tyme, a multi-country digital banking group.
Tyme designs, builds, and commercializes digital banks to solve the challenge of financial services access for the underserved and unbanked in emerging markets. With headquarters in Singapore, it is one of the fastest growing digital banking groups globally with 7 million customers in South Africa.
Its strategy, business development and data analytics capabilities are housed in Singapore and Hong Kong; and its technology and product development hub is located in Vietnam. One of the key elements to Tyme’s fast growth is its partner-led business model. In the Philippines, its main partner is the Gokongwei group of companies.
What does Tyme bring to GoTyme Bank? The biggest thing that it brings is experience and expertise—it’s not new to digital banking. And it has done it at scale. While GoTyme Bank is one of the newbies in digital banking in the country, Tyme has been at it for five years already.
GoTyme Bank gets to leverage Tyme’s existing products so customers will soon see that GoTyme Bank’s pace of product development will surpass those of other digital banks in the country.
Tyme has been built as a scalable digital bank with its technology stack hosted in the cloud (Amazon Web Services). Its products are transparent and simple to use. Tyme’s in-store kiosk model supported by brand ambassadors gives customers a more personal experience.
GoTyme Bank also gains resilience. Since Tyme has experienced numerous transactions of different types, Tyme, along with its credible ecosystem of partners and service provider, has worked out the kinks. On the issue of cybersecurity, Tyme has had years to strengthen the platform that makes it one of the most secure systems from a cybersecurity perspective.
On top of that, Tyme’s war chest has grown. It recently closed a Pre-series C capital raise that brought in an additional USD 77.8 million, much of which will be deployed in the Philippines to accelerate the growth of GoTyme Bank.
