Cover story

Bruce Paveley, GoTyme Bank

It seems there’s a new bank in town, or, rather, one with a new shimmery blue livery, and a brand-new app. It’s even changed its name, to GoTyme. Gone are the squat yellow kiosks that used to compete for space next to the bustling money counter in Pick n Pay stores, now replaced with sleek machines with giant touchscreens. You won’t even find the kiosks in the grocer anymore, but in aerodynamic customer hubs in the concourses of malls. This is probably a good thing because some people had taken to referring to GoTyme as “the Pick n Pay bank”.

The South African banking market is a crowded and stratified one. Standard Bank, FirstRand, Absa, Nedbank, Investec and Capitec all have healthy deposit bases and balance sheets, and control 90% of the sector’s assets. It’s in the mid-market that the fight is going to get bloody. Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala, speaking at the Semafor World Economic Summit in Washington in April, said there was bound to be consolidation in the sector and that a number of Tier 2 banks were “showing signs of advanced challenges”.