The Philippines has been notoriously slow to embrace digitization. The country lags behind Thailand, Vietnam and other ASEAN neighbors when it comes to e-commerce and digital services despite a young population ready to adopt tech. That is one reason why Singapore-based Tyme Group has partnered with Gokongwei Group to launch GoTyme Bank, a fully-fledged digital bank.
Plans call for GoTyme Bank to offer digital banking services via kiosks set up in Robinsons Department Stores, Robinsons Supermarkets and other outlets owned by the conglomerate. The hope is for 348 kiosks to be in operation by the end of 2023. These will provide access to secure, convenient and high-quality financial services with a focus on individuals in the Philippines excluded from the formal banking system.
“Access to electronic payments has radically improved over the past few years in the Philippines, but access to basic accounts is only the beginning of what is required. Today, less than three percent of Filipinos have access to affordable credit such as a credit card, less than three percent have access to insurance, and less than three percent have access to high yield investments such as stocks,” Nate Clarke, President and CEO of GoTyme Bank, explained.
He continued, “Every year, millions of smart, employed Filipinos fall short of their potential because they do not have access to high-quality banking products. At GoTyme Bank, we are here to unlock the financial potential of all Filipinos through next-level banking.”
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Going from zero to digital bank in the Philippines
Starting a digital bank in a new country would seem daunting on the surface, but Tyme Group had an ace up its sleeve. The firm had a long-standing partnership with global cloud banking platform Mambu with the latter instrumental in transitioning South Africa’s TymeBank into a digital bank.
The Singapore-based financial outfit once again reached out to Mambu when launching GoTyme Bank in the Philippines. It may not have been a like-for-like situation, but the existing relationship ensured Tyme Group wasn’t building its Philippine venture from the ground up.
“With the knowledge gained from transitioning TymeBank in South Africa to a fully digital bank, we knew we needed GoTyme Bank to be ‘born in the cloud’ in order to have the capacity to scale efficiently, so Mambu’s SaaS cloud-native, API-first banking platform was the obvious choice for us,” Clarke stated. “We understood what the Mambu platform was capable of and we were confident it would enable us to ‘lift and shift’ the TymeBank digital bank concept from South Africa to the Philippines, a market very similar in some ways, but very different in others, particularly in terms of the regulatory landscape.”
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