- TymeBank will now have kiosks in selected TFG stores where customers can access banking services.
- It also plans to extend its interest-fee “Buy Now Pay Later” payment option first in 400 Jet stores this year.
- The deal helps the challenger digital bank to reach TFG’s 26 million customers.
TymeBank’s kiosks will now be present in TFG stores, allowing the retailer’s customers to access the bank’s services inside stores such as Jet and Foschini.
The bank plans to roll out more than 600 kiosks in selected TFG stores during the first half of next year. The bank also plans to launch a TFG/TymeBank branded debit card.
Customers of TFG, Jet, The Fix, Exact, and Sportscene, will be able to use the bank’s “Buy Now Pay Later” product called MoreTyme. The product is an alternative three month interest-free payment option.
TymeBank’s foothold in the partnership, planned for November, will be in the Jet stores stable, which TFG acquired last year from Edcon following a business rescue process.
“The first thing we’re going to be doing with TFG is to expand our Buy Now Pay Later product called MoreTyme into Jet stores (over 400 Jet stores),” Tauriq Keraan, CEO of TymeBank told Business Insider South Africa on Tuesday.
TFG Customers will also be able to shop and transact concurrently. They will be able to use the TymeBank app and kiosks to make electricity payments, money transfers, and utilise its other savings products.
Keraan said TymeBank and TFG will be working on developing a range of financial products such as insurance and other lending solutions which will be implemented in a staggered approach. The partnership widens TymeBank’s reach to TFG’s 26 million customers in South Africa.
Moving inside TFG would not only bring the bank, which already has 3.8 million clients, massive reach but will also help it diversify its customer base, Keraan said.
“It will also allow us to diversify our income streams, largely through lending and other value-added services,” he said.
“For us, we are in no way abandoning our existing segments. We continue to service them with absolute passion, but we are quite underrepresented in the higher LSM, and I think it’s important as a bank to get a fair representation across different demographics,” Keraan said.
When TymeBank first launched, it positioned itself as a lost-cost bank and gradually adopted wealthier customers. The TFG partnership helps it set itself to attract consumers in the higher LSM more directly.
“TFG has some very exciting value brands, but they have really prominent, well established and revered brands in the middle, upper-middle, and even the upper segments; so that diversity of store reach into different demographics [is] really exciting to us,” Keraan said.
The TFG group has over 2,500 stores in the country, catering to consumers across the value segment to the upper end of the market.
Anthony Thunström, CEO for TFG said: “We are truly excited about this partnership with TymeBank, as they are recognised as one of the fastest-growing digital banks globally. The bank has deep expertise in managing a digital ecosystem platform plus related products and services, and I believe TFG’s customers will benefit from an enhanced shopping experience.”