Investor Updates: Tyme Bank acquires SME financing platform

Tyme Bank acquires SME financing platform

Highlights

• South African digital banking group Tyme Bank has announced today that it will proceed with the acquisition of fintech firm Retail Capital, which provides funding services to SMEs in the country.
• The acquisition, which is still subject to regulatory approvals, would see Retail Capital become a division of TymeBank.
• If approved, the deal would see Retail Capital’s funding expertise and TymeBank’s deposit base and operations combined to serve a broader customer base.

Source: ITNewsAfrica

Our Takeaway

Lack of access to working capital remains a huge problem facing the growing small and mid-sized retail sector in South Africa and the continent at large. Over the past decade, Retail Capital claims to have provided more than 43,000 business owners in the country with over $329 million in working capital, making it the largest SME funder of its kind in the sector. With the Tyme Bank deal, channeling even more funding efficiently to business owners should contribute to the expansion of the historically underserved SMEs sector.

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South Africa’s Teraco acquired by US cloud computing firm

Highlights

• South Africa-based colocation data centers and interconnection platforms provider for Africa, Teraco Data Environments, has been acquired by California cloud computing and data center firm Digital Realty.
• Digital Realty is one of the largest providers of cloud and carrier-neutral data center, colocation, and interconnection solutions in the world. 
• The firm is set to acquire a majority interest in Teraco from a consortium of investors, including Berkshire Partners and Permira.

Source: ITNewsAfrica

Our Takeaway

The acquisition of Teraco now adds South Africa to Digital Realty’s three markets on the continent, including Kenya, Mozambique, and Nigeria. It also further underlines the huge untapped potential in Africa’s cloud computing market, which has pulled big operators like Microsoft, Amazon, Huawei, and Equinix Inc. and huge investments into data centers on the continent. At the start of 2021, Teraco pledged $152 million towards efforts to build Africa’s largest data center facility in South Africa and last August completed construction on a massive hyper-scale data center campus in Johannesburg. The ongoing implementation of Google’s Equiano subsea cable encircling Africa makes the continent even more attractive. 

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Nedbank partners with digital dealmaker for its customers

Highlights

• South Africa’s Nedbank Commercial Banking has partnered with global deal-matchmaking platform Opportunity Network, which is expected to become available for customers from this week.
• The Opportunity Network is a deal-matching platform that connects over 50,000 selected businesses and private investors to business opportunities in over 140 countries with a $500 billion transaction flow.
• The new partnership will enable Nedbank’s clients to grow their business on a trusted and world-recognized platform, and the subscription to be on the Opportunity Network platform will be free to Nedbank Commercial Banking clients.

Source: ITNewsAfrica

Our Takeaway

Both parties to this deal believe the opportunities in South Africa, which are currently estimated to cover 60 different industries, will attract interest from partners around the world. More interestingly, the partnership highlights the rapid digital transformation that’s been playing out in Africa’s traditional financial services industry over the past decade. Embracing new technologies and digital-led solutions is a no-brainer. To compete with digital natives, and survive, banks today must provide an end-to-end digital experience to their customers by integrating necessary technologies.