Motsepe-backed GoTyme turns employees into shareholders in growth push

Key topics:GoTyme offers staff ownership to drive growth mindsetDigital bank targets 50m users before global listingMotsepe-backed lender eyes $15bn future valuation.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Prinesha Naidoo.GoTyme Bank Ltd. has invited all its employees to share ownership in the digital lender controlled by South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe as it seeks to scale up operations. Africa’s first profitable standalone digital bank this week extended the offer to its 2,000-strong global employee base across all levels of the company and started sessions to educate staff about the new incentive and its potential benefits. “We want our staff to behave like owners,” Chief Executive Officer Cheslyn Jacobs said on the sidelines of an event in Johannesburg Thursday night. “This business still is in a hyper-growth phase so we think this is going to make meaningful differences to our people’s lives.” .Read more:.Capitec Bank delivers strong interim growth driven by client-first innovation.Majority owned by Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital Investments Ltd., GoTyme Bank has more than 21 million customers in South Africa and the Philippines, where it runs a joint venture with the Gokongwei Group. It’s also backed by China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. and has operations in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore. The lender was valued $1.5 billion in 2024 after a fundraising round that included a $150 million investment from Latin America’s most valuable financial company, Nu Holdings Ltd.Jacobs declined to share an updated valuation, saying instead that the business would post a record profit for the year through June and is signing up about 450,000 new clients per month across South Africa and the Philippines. While GoTyme is still working toward listing to further fuel its growth, its internal narrative around such a move has changed, Jacobs said.“We’ve publicly said we want to do this before the next decade, but we do talk about it slightly differently now,” he said. “What we’ve realized is you struggle to predict these things, so now we talk about being listing-ready from a timeline perspective in three to four years from now. But we’re only going to do it if it makes sense.”.Read more:.Standard Bank trading update: Revenue growth meets targets despite rate cut headwinds.The lender would consider a listing anywhere globally closer to when it reaches 50 million clients and with “the right kind of valuation,” Jacobs said. “The last number was $1.5 billion — 10x it. It would be lovely to list at $15 billion. Wouldn’t that be amazing?” he said. .© 2026 Bloomberg L.P..Read GoTyme's statement in full below.GoTyme Bank Turns Employees Into Owners as Growth ContinuesThursday, 14 May 2026 - GoTyme Bank has announced that its employees will now become shareholders in the business, a meaningful step as the bank moves into its next phase of growth.The decision comes at a time when GoTyme is evolving beyond its early days as a challenger brand, following strong customer growth, a growing physical presence, and its recent move into profitability. “At a certain point, you realise success shouldn’t sit in one place,” says Cheslyn Jacobs, CEO of GoTyme Bank. “This business has been built by people who show up every day and make it work. Giving them a stake in what we’re building just feels right. It’s about shared ownership, shared responsibility, and shared success.” It also comes as the bank continues to build real momentum. More than one million South Africans have downloaded and migrated to the new GoTyme Bank app, including over 200,000 existing customers who hadn’t used the previous version at all. At the same time, the bank has been quietly expanding its physical presence. Nearly 30 Customer Hubs are already up and running in retail centres across the country, with plans to grow that number to around 100. Locally, GoTyme forms part of the broader Tyme Group, which now serves more than 21 million customers globally, including 13 million in South Africa alone. For Jacobs, the move toward employee ownership goes beyond incentives. “It says something about the kind of company we’re trying to build,” he explains. “The people closest to our customers should feel personally invested in what happens next. That’s how you build something that lasts.” The announcement also marks just how far the bank has come since launching seven years ago.What started as a digital challenger bank has grown into one of the country’s largest digital banking platforms, recently reaching a major industry milestone as Africa’s first profitable digital bank. “Becoming profitable showed us that the model works,” Jacobs says. “Now it’s about the next phase, growing responsibly, earning trust, and making sure the people who helped build this business are part of where it goes next.” Alongside its customer growth, GoTyme has continued investing in the basics that support long-term scale, from upgrading its banking app to rolling out more Customer Hubs, and more recently, introducing Apple Pay as part of its digital payments offering. All of this is aimed at making banking simpler, more accessible, and more connected to how people actually live and transact. “This next chapter is about building at scale without losing what made us different in the first place,” Jacobs adds. “There’s clearly an appetite in South Africa for a different kind of banking experience. The focus now is on growing in a way that keeps us close to our customers, and to the people behind the business.”

Motsepe-backed GoTyme turns employees into shareholders in growth push

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