The Power of Partnerships with Tauriq Keraan

In this Huawei FSI Series conversation, TymeBank CEO Tauriq Keraan tells Colin Iles how a bank with no branches passed 4 million customers roughly two and a half years after launch, growing at 140,000 to 150,000 new customers a month. The sharpest thread through the interview is partnership: Keraan walks through why TymeBank chose to build with Pick n Pay, Boxer and the Zion Christian Church rather than go it alone, and what that hybrid model has taught the bank about risk and iteration.

Three lives: from a 2007 bank project to a fully regulated digital bank

TymeBank's history runs through three distinct corporate identities before it became the bank operating today. Keraan traces it back to 2007, when he and a co-founder built a digital banking operation inside a large South African bank, then to Project Ubiquity, a mobile banking venture inside Deloitte's corporate venturing team around 2011 that could not be incorporated under Deloitte and was spun out instead, with about 20 people leaving secure jobs for one month's salary security because everyone bought into the purpose of bringing systemic reform to the banking sector. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, then the tenth-biggest bank in the world, bought the standalone FinTech in 2015, before a portfolio consolidation in CBA's home markets led African Rainbow Capital to buy the business, with management also taking a stake. Keraan sums up the arc as three lives: founder-led FinTech, a phase inside a large banking corporation, and now a fully regulated, scaled retail digital bank with a diversified shareholder base.

The Pick n Pay and Boxer partnership: solving South Africa's cash problem

TymeBank's partnership with Pick n Pay and Boxer sits at the centre of its business model because South Africa is still a cash-heavy, physically-driven retail market. Keraan explains that e-commerce accounts for only around 2% of transactions and cash still covers more than 60%, so a digital-only bank would be limiting itself to a niche position. The partnership solves this through in-store kiosks that provide paperless onboarding in under five minutes and issue a live, personalised debit card on the spot, while giving TymeBank access to Pick n Pay's Smart Shopper base of more than 8 million loyal customers and the brand affinity that comes with it. For Pick n Pay and Boxer, the benefits run the other way: TymeBank has grown the Smart Shopper loyalty base by millions of customers and reduced the cost and risk of in-store cash handling, letting the retailers enter financial services through partnership rather than building a competing offer themselves. The same model, Keraan says, laid the groundwork for TymeBank's later partnership with the Foschini Group.

Nine kiosk prototypes and the shift-left principle

Building the kiosk hardware that powers in-store onboarding took nine prototypes and three industrial versions in under two and a half years, and Keraan is candid about the failures along the way. Early versions were dislodged by industrial floor polishers knocking against the unit in-store, fixed with a simple plastic splitter, while a separate incident saw the bank's mobile data plan run out mid-onboarding, cutting connectivity and leaving customers stuck with a half-created profile they couldn't complete. Fixing that meant renegotiating the data plan with the network operator and rebuilding the onboarding process itself. Keraan frames this as entrepreneurship in practice: assess and take calculated risk, then act fast on customer feedback. TymeBank now runs eight to ten production deployments a day and roughly 200 tested, staged deployments a month, which Keraan says is what lets a young bank compete with incumbents that have operated for decades.

The Zion Christian Church partnership: a co-branded card with no distribution cost

TymeBank's partnership with the Zion Christian Church, which Keraan describes as the largest church group in South Africa with 12 million members, around 6 million of whom qualify for banking products, runs on a co-branded card that doubles as a church membership card. The card is dispensed through a ruggedised mobile kiosk built to fit in a suitcase and withstand vibration, dust and heat, letting the ZCC digitise part of its own operations while TymeBank carries none of the distribution cost under the commercial arrangement. Keraan notes that COVID-19 gathering restrictions limited volumes so far, since the church has not been able to congregate in the large groups the model depends on, but he expects that benefit to grow once gatherings return to normal.

Exporting the model: why TymeBank chose the Philippines next

TymeBank's push beyond South Africa runs through its sister company Tyme Global, which has already secured a banking licence in the Philippines. Keraan lays out the three criteria TymeBank uses to pick new markets: structural attributes such as an unbanked population and a less concentrated retail sector that suits the kiosk model, a progressive regulatory regime that allows digital ID verification and cloud hosting without wet-signature paperwork, and a strong in-country partner who understands local distribution and regulator relationships. The Philippines fits on all three counts, with only around 20% of the population banked and a prominent existing culture of P2P wallet payments TymeBank can build on. Keraan is deliberate about pace: TymeBank will not roll out to six countries in a year or two, because entrenching the model properly in each market matters more than speed.

Jump to a section of the interview

All links open the full recording on YouTube.

• How fast is TymeBank growing?
• Is it a competitive advantage for you to be backed by a VC?
• How important is purpose at TymeBank?
• Partnerships are the secret to TymeBank's success
• Will TymeBank export its model?
• Kiosks, experimentation and mistakes
• What's your view on crypto and sovereign identity?
• How does your idea funnel work?
• Customer service without branches

How fast is TymeBank actually growing?

TymeBank passed 4 million customers around two and a half years after launch, adding roughly 140,000 to 150,000 new customers every month. Keraan says that at this early stage of its lifecycle, TymeBank is growing faster than most digital banks did at the same point, though he cautions the comparison needs proper benchmarking against banks further along in their own maturity curves.

Why does TymeBank partner instead of building everything itself?

Keraan says partnership is central to TymeBank's business model because a young digital bank in an emerging market cannot rely on distribution alone to reach scale. Partners like Pick n Pay and Boxer provide physical footfall, real-time cash deposits and withdrawals, and brand affinity that a new entrant without a large marketing budget cannot buy on its own, while partners such as the Zion Christian Church bring a large, loyal, captive membership base. In exchange, TymeBank gives retail partners a way into financial services without having to build a competing bank of their own.

Does TymeBank see crypto as a real transactional currency?

Keraan describes crypto as an emerging alternative asset class rather than a settled transactional currency, saying TymeBank has reservations for now while the space matures. He wants to see clearer anti-money-laundering standards and better interoperability before forming a firmer view, and says TymeBank is watching the space closely without active plans to move on it.