African Rainbow Capital has eye on banking licence via Tyme stake
African Rainbow Capital’s banking partner is close to getting a licence that it wants to use to challenge the dominance of SA’s biggest lenders. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has said it will sell 10% of Tyme, a Johannesburg-based lender that allows customers to access funds through their cellphones, to billionaire Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital (ARC) after buying the business in 2015. Tyme was granted a provisional licence by the Reserve Bank last year. "The licence is expected before the end of September," ARC co-CEO Johan van der Merwe said on Thursday. The regulator was looking at the cloud-based system that ARC’s fintech partner is using to make sure it works before granting the full licence, he said. SA’s four biggest banks, including Standard Bank and FirstRand, have not had to face competition in the consumer market since Capitec started more than 15 years ago. Now, the Reserve Bank has three provisional licensees: Tyme, insurer Discovery and the South Africa...
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