GoTyme Bank has invited all its employees to share in the ownership of the digital lender, controlled by South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe, as it seeks to scale up operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Africa\u2019s first profitable standalone digital bank this week extended the offer to its 2,000-strong global employee base across all levels of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has also started sessions to educate staff about the new incentive and its potential benefits. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe want our staff to behave like owners,\u201d Chief Executive Officer Cheslyn Jacobs said on the sidelines of an event in Johannesburg Thursday night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis business still is in a hyper-growth phase, so we think this is going to make meaningful differences to our people\u2019s lives.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Majority-owned by Motsepe\u2019s African Rainbow Capital Investments, GoTyme Bank has more than 21 million customers in South Africa and the Philippines, where it operates a joint venture with the Gokongwei Group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s also backed by China\u2019s Tencent Holdings and has operations in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lender was valued at $1.5 billion in 2024 after a fundraising round that included a $150 million investment from Latin America\u2019s most valuable financial company, Nu Holdings Ltd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jacobs declined to share an updated valuation, saying instead that the business would post a record profit for the year through June and is signing up about 450,000 new clients per month across South Africa and the Philippines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While GoTyme is still working toward listing to further fuel its growth, its internal narrative around such a move has changed, Jacobs said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve publicly said we want to do this before the next decade, but we do talk about it slightly differently now,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019ve realised is you struggle to predict these things, so now we talk about being listing-ready from a timeline perspective in three to four years from now. But we\u2019re only going to do it if it makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lender would consider a listing anywhere globally closer to when it reaches 50 million clients and with \u201cthe right kind of valuation,\u201d Jacobs said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe last number was $1.5 billion \u2014 10x it. It would be lovely to list at $15 billion. Wouldn\u2019t that be amazing?\u201d he said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GoTyme Bank has invited all its employees to share in the ownership of the digital lender, controlled by South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe, as it seeks to scale up operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":817481,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[23854,4136],"class_list":["post-860546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-gotyme","tag-patrice-motsepe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860546"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":860549,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860546\/revisions\/860549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}