Hosts:

• Brett King (HOST)

Featured Guests:

• Carl Westvig, CEO, TymeBank South Africa
• MK, Founder & CEO, Unitey

HOST (Brett King): Welcome back to Breaking Banks. In this episode, we revisit Cape Town, South Africa, where we catch up with TymeBank, now with 18 million customers and rapid growth in the Philippines, Indonesia, and soon, Hong Kong.

Why Asia Over Africa?

CARL WESTVIG:

• Asia offers unmatched scale: 280M in Indonesia, 120M in the Philippines vs. 60M in South Africa.
• Markets are digitally native but underbanked.
• Strong local partnerships and regional knowledge in Singapore make operations efficient.

QUOTE: “Asia has scale… and we already have strong partners and presence there.”

Technology as a Superpower

• Tech team based in Vietnam with 650+ engineers.
• Migrating to a unified tech stack across countries to improve operational efficiency.
• Investing in agentic AI and creating unified data lakes to optimize insights.

QUOTE: “We built 2.0 in the Philippines, and now we’re merging everything back into one code base.”

Use of AI in Banking

• Operational AI already used in fraud detection, compliance, and customer service.
• Internal executive training workshops on tools like ChatGPT.
• Vision: Launch new territories with only 35 staff by leveraging AI.

Phygital Distribution: A Competitive Edge

• Tyme uses “phygital” (physical + digital) distribution.
• 500 in-store kiosks in the Philippines create customer access and brand awareness.
• Digital onboarding grew from 10% to 27% in South Africa; target is 50%.

QUOTE: “We call it phygital. It gives brand presence and scalability.”

Evolving Customer Experience with Agentic AI

• Real-time telemetry data from platforms like Meringage enhances personalized journeys.
• Future UX will rely on semantic AI to deliver contextual financial recommendations.

Lending Transformation

• Lending now accounts for 40% loan-to-deposit ratio.
• Acquiring Sunlum’s personal loan book.
• 100% digital lending journeys via web and app.

Product Expansion Plans

• Fractional investing, crypto custody, multi-currency accounts, remittance tools.
• Massive focus on financial inclusion and embedded finance for underbanked markets.

QUOTE: “The money transfer business in the Philippines is huge… and we’re plumbing that in.”

---

Unitey and the Sovereignty of National Payments Infrastructure

HOST (Brett King): Later in the episode, we speak with MK from Unitey (UNITEY.com), which is building sovereign payment ecosystems in collaboration with central banks.

From Corporate Life to Entrepreneurial Infrastructure

MK:

• Ex-payments executive turned founder.
• Founded Unitey in 2020 to create national-scale payment ecosystems.
• Currently licensed and operational in UAE.

QUOTE: “We create and operate payment ecosystems focused on sovereignty.”

Why Sovereignty Matters in Payments

• Legacy systems like SWIFT, Visa, and Mastercard have become geopolitical tools.
• Many governments are pursuing domestic payment rails for operational resilience.
• Unitey works with central banks in South Africa, Turkey, UAE, and more.

Building Interoperable Payment Networks

• Unitey simplifies card-based systems while developing interoperability with new rails like RTP and mobile money.
• Unlike Mojaloop, Unitey began by demystifying card networks before layering in other capabilities.

The Role of AI and Real-Time Transactions

• Real-time AI-driven payments will require smart wallets that dynamically select optimal rails.
• Regulatory complexity, especially cross-border, is a major hurdle.
• Stablecoins (USDC, CBDCs, private bank coins) will increasingly be part of this system.

QUOTE: “We’re not just building payments… we’re building choice, sovereignty, and speed.”

---

Core Concepts & Entity Mapping Keywords

• Agentic AI, Semantic AI, Real-Time Payments, Digital Onboarding, Phygital Banking, Operational Resilience, Financial Inclusion, Embedded Finance, Neobank Strategy, Open Finance, Payment Rail Interoperability, Stablecoins, Sovereign Ecosystems

---

Conclusion

HOST (Brett King): TymeBank’s growth story is a case study in fintech transformation at scale—enabled by phygital distribution, AI tooling, and a commitment to inclusive digital banking. Meanwhile, Unitey is reshaping how nations think about sovereignty and infrastructure in a world of agentic payments.

Don’t forget to subscribe, review, and share this episode. See you next week on Breaking Banks.

Breaking Banks Episode 597 Full Transcript

Welcome back to Breaking Banks. This time we return to Cape Town, South Africa, where we interview our old friends at TymeBank, see what they’ve been up to. And they’re up to 80 million customers right now.

So this is a, you know, this is a neo bank that may go sort of unrecognized in much of the West, but really is growing incredibly in multiple markets, not only in South Africa, where they have over 10 million customers now, but in Manila and launching in Indonesia. So really interesting to check that out. And also, we look at Unitey, a company working with regulators around the world on open banking standards and deploying now in the UAE market, where obviously I’m spending a lot of time in right now.

So let’s go back to Cape Town to the CrossFin conference in South Africa and speak to these emerging companies in the space. So a little while back, we had Kone, who I guess is the chairman, executive chairman of TymeBank, which is the largest digital bank in the region now, of course, operating in the Philippines. I learned from earlier today that you guys are at 18 million customers globally now, which makes you a pretty significant player.

But I’ll let you introduce yourself first. Sure. Yeah, so I’m Carl Westwig, CEO of TymeBank South Africa, and I also have responsibility for the lending side of the group across the various territories.

So Time, when did you guys, when were you founders? 2014, was it, or a bit earlier than that? A little bit earlier.

So 2011, 2012, so the early stage stuff. But in reality, we only got our bank license in South Africa 2019, so six years. OK.

And you’re now in South Africa, the Philippines. Where else are you? So we’re live now with a lending product, an MCA product in Indonesia.

Wow. Yeah. And shortly, Hong Kong.

Wow. That’s probably ahead of the curve.

[Speaker 2]

Wow.

[Speaker 1]

Hong Kong. So you are becoming really global. So why Asian markets instead of expanding your footprint in Africa?

A bunch of things. So firstly, Asia has scale. So the Philippines, 120 million people.

Indonesia, 280 million people. South Africa, 60 million people. So the scale perspective is there.

It’s a young, digitally savvy market, largely underbanked. And we also have very strong partners in the region. So there’s a knowledge base already, having based ourselves out of originally Hong Kong and now Singapore.

So it’s easy access for the senior team. And, you know, in terms of the tech, is a lot of the tech that you’ve invested in South Africa, is that transportable to the Philippines and Indonesia or is it an entirely new tech stack? So the structure that was set up, so we have a tech engineering team in Vietnam.

Oh, in Vietnam. Yeah. Wow.

And that’s very cost effective. It is. And it now numbers 650 people.

Oh, wow. Yeah, of engineers. Wow.

So that’s our superpower. So the first tech stack that was built for South Africa, 1.0, we effectively launched 2.0 three years later in the Philippines. And we’re now actually going through refactoring all of our tech back into one code base.

Wow. So we will launch a new app in South Africa, September, October this year. And with your Series D, wasn’t it?

You became a unicorn. Yeah. And Nubank was an investor, I understand.

Nubank’s an investor. That’s pretty wild. And actually, they’ve been phenomenal partners already.

They’ve given us access to their C-suite across all their functions. So how they dealt with operational, organizational structure change, how they dealt with cyber, how they deal with AI, and particularly in the lending space. So there’s massive amounts we can learn from them.

All right. So let’s talk about AI, seeing as you introduced it. What are you guys, where are you using AI today?

And where are you investing in AI for the future of TimeBank? Okay. So at the moment, it’s almost on a use case by use case basis.

But from a strategic perspective, what we’re doing is we’re making sure that our tooling across all the territories are identical. So we’re standardizing our tooling. We’re making sure that all the telemetry data, all the transaction data, everything that we’ve got, even down to individual functions, departments, is all being captured in data lakes.

Which makes you then AI ready for anything thereafter, which is very hard for an incumbent bank to do. So that’s been set up. So at the moment, it’s getting the staff familiar with the tools.

We have some operational improvements across customer service, fraud, compliance already. But I think the game changer is going to be where we start getting to agentic AI, trained using the knowledge we already have. So let me ask you how you use AI in your daily routine.

How are you getting up to speed with AI so you can remain relevant, leading a team that obviously is integrating it? So I personally use ChatGPT on the pro version where we’re generating reports, updating documents, summarizing. But we started internal workshops where we’re facilitating an executive level and at the next level down.

Workshops where we’re teaching people the broader tool. So how to do podcasts, how to generate copy, how to produce managing reports, how to analyze data. There’s so many use cases.

It’s fast. It’s fast. So you’ve got some really good expansion coming on.

But the one thing that you guys have been sort of quite innovative with is your distribution strategy in terms of how you acquire customers. So you have some physicality here. I noticed Revolut sort of copied that with their card distribution machines and imports and things like that, which you guys sort of pioneered that, right?

Are you using that in the Philippines and Indonesia as well or is there mainly digital acquisition there? So what we typically find, so yes, we are using physical distribution. So our partner in the Philippines is the Gokongwe family and through Robinson’s retail, they have 4,000 outlets.

We have 500 kiosks that are manned and it’s great for creating, one, a footprint, two, brand presence. Right. And that’s the new branch.

That’s great. Exactly. And it creates a buzz.

But what we’re seeing already now is the shift. So in South Africa, we were 10% digital onboarding. We’re now to 27% and the plan is to get that to 50%.

So we definitely, once the brand’s established, you’re shifting more and more to the digital space. And what is it in the Philippines? It must be similar.

I’d be lying if I told you. It’s interesting. So physical distribution, but it’s still digitized physical, phygital, I guess.

Correct. We call it phygital. Phygital.

Okay. Very cool. So in terms of the next generation of AI, we’re talking a lot about agentic AI and semantic AI, conversational.

You’ve talked about integration of that. How are you thinking about how a time customer’s experience is going to change on a day-to-day basis with AI? It’s a great question.

So I guess a lot of our focus up to now has been on the operating model of the bank. So by training up the functional agentic AIs, we can launch a new territory with 35 people, not 650 people. Okay.

So that’s going to give a step change in terms of cost of acquisition, cost to serve, all those good things. In terms of the user journey. So we already have plumbed in an event platform called Meringage.

And what that does, that grabs telemetry data, transaction data, and we build user journeys for customers. And AI will make sure that what gets delivered to the customer all the time is relevant. So it’s going to assist the user journey.

It’s not necessarily going to reduce the journey. The journey’s quite quick already. So it’s a pretty cool journey.

When did you join Time? So we were, I ran a business called Retail Capital. Oh, you were acquired.

We were acquired. So Crossfin was shareholders in us and we were acquired two and a half years ago now. And it was, yeah, it was a great acquisition on both sides for both for us and for Time at the time.

Time had built a transaction and a very strong liability side of the balance sheet. We brought the DNA for lending per se. And so how is, you know, how’s the lending business growing for Time now?

How critical is that? Significantly. So pre the acquisition, it was 100% liabilities.

We now are 40% loan to deposit ratio. We’ve got an acquisition in the mix right now to acquire part of Sunlum’s personal loan book, which takes about 70, 80%. And I’m assuming that all of the lending is done through the app, is it?

It’s through a web journey or an app journey. Okay. So it’s 100% digital.

100% digital. Okay. So that’s an important point to mention compared with your onboarding for new customers, that when they’re onboarded, the new services and their share of wallet is significantly digital.

Correct. Yeah. And are you guys looking at doing, you know, sort of branching out, you know, apart from credit into things like maybe crypto custody or fractional investment, you know, things like what we’ve seen with Robin Hoarder with gold money or things like that.

What are you thinking of doing in terms of broadening the service layer? So we’re plumbing those in already. So there’s probably a stronger drive from the Philippines team right now.

So fractional share ownership is important. US dollar accounts, deposit accounts as opposed to Philippine peso. Money transfers.

So all of those are being plumbed in as we speak. The money transfer business is huge for the Philippines. It is.

Yeah. It is. Great.

So just to wrap up, what have you guys got planned for later this year? What sort of announcements can we expect to hear from TimeBank? So the main issue right now is refactoring our platforms.

So we will go live September, October with a new journey and a new UI, UX for the bank. We are looking at upgrading our brand and putting some marketing dollars behind it. So we’ll become a lot more visible in the local market.

And with the new tech stack going in, we can also add in new product propositions. So the likes of Apple Pay and all the other stuff, the missing gaps to be fully fledged. Well, thanks for coming, giving us an update.

You know, we’re very keen fans of Time, seeing you guys progress. It’s incredible to see your growth. Please say thanks to Cone for us as well, for giving us some of your time.

And yeah, it’s been great. Thanks again. Thank you.

[Speaker 2]

This show is brought to you by Alloy Labs. As much as we love talking on the show, we believe that action is more valuable than talk. Alloy Labs is the industry leader in helping fearless bankers drive exponential growth through collaboration, exclusive partnerships, and powerful network effects that give them an unfair advantage.

Learn more at AlloyLabs.com. Alloy Labs, banking unbound.

[Speaker 1]

Well, we’re back in Cape Town, this time with Unitey. And I guess you’re the founder or CEO. I am.

[Speaker 3]

Yes.

[Speaker 1]

So first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself and about Unitey. Thank you, Brett. I’m a second generation entrepreneur who happened to spend more than a decade in corporate life.

OK. I worked for a very large French multinational, which was in payments, digital identity, and connectivity services business. Because of my entrepreneurial roots, I got tired after about a decade of being in the corporate straitjacket, and then decided to create this company called Unitey.

Back in 2020, just out of COVID, actually. Tough time to start again. Yeah, I know, I know.

But I think it was also one of the reasons, you know, when you start thinking differently. Sure, sure. And the opportUnitey, the digitalization opportUnitey after COVID was just immense, right?

One of the driving factors. So we are a multifaceted payment ecosystem player. We have a payment services license in UAE, issuing and acquiring both, and we’re operating that.

But our main focus, our main business is creating, designing, building, and operating payment ecosystems for central banks and other governments, which are driving payment service utilities. Focused on sovereignty of the ecosystem. You know that, you know…

Sovereignty of the ecosystem, that’s a weird, that’s a weird term. Yeah. Yeah.

So, so, well, I think we’ve seen over the last, let’s say decade plus, that geopolitics has made, at least retail payment ecosystems, an issue where the governments need to look at it from… They have been weaponized, certainly SWIFT and the card schemes. I was, I was trying not to use the word weaponized, but thanks, that’s exactly right, but it’s the weaponization of the payment tech that has actually created the necessity of the governments to…

It’s a big driver why China’s implemented SIPs, you know, they don’t want to get caught with, you know, their own payments rails being, or their payments rails access being shut down. And, you know, it’s interesting, Russia’s gone on the union pay now for the same reason. So, yeah.

So, so these are, so this, this started happening, let’s say 10 years ago, you know, and obviously India, China, Brazil were early thinkers. They started addressing the issue very early on, but I think very recently after the recent war, pretty much every government in the world is re-looking at their systems at the minimum to try and de-risk and at the best possible, be as independent as possible. It’s not possible, practically possible to be completely independent if you’re working in a global…

We’re a US, you know, we’re a US-based podcast, you know, but, you know, let’s be realistic, the current administration is, has created some perception of risk when it comes to dollarization and US payments networks and so forth in terms of how fragile they might actually be if you’ve got an administration that is, you know, inclined to, to use those for, for political purposes. So there’s gotta be some level of protection in this. So, so, you know, I’m quite a realist and, you know, in this ecosystem, which is a fantastic ecosystem, was built over 50, 60 years.

There’s nothing wrong with the ecosystem or with the business. Except that it was built back in the 60s and 70s when compute power and bandwidth were extremely limited. So, you know, nowadays we have the technology for far more robust payments rails and systems.

Agreed. We don’t need to have separate authentication. We can put identity in the payments transaction chain.

Very true, very true. And that change is happening and will continue to happen progressively. Technologies will bring in efficiency into the ecosystems, but the reality is that the legacy ecosystem built by these players is still the largest ecosystem in the payments world.

So are you sort of like a bridge between different payment systems or do you have your own payments rail? So, so we, we specialize in demystifying the card payment rails, trying to make it simpler to implement in a domestic or a regional context. But at the same time, our roadmaps are very clearly focused on creating interoperability between other rails, which are coming up very fast.

RTP, real-time payments, right? In this continent, you know, mobile money has been the most successful implementation and you just can’t, you know, leave them out. So the platform actually caters to ensuring there’s multiple rails can actually interoperate.

Are you working with Mojaloop here or? Mojaloop, no, we’re not working with Mojaloop. As I said, our focus, our starting point was the, was the, was the Cardico system.

And there’s a lot of work that we are currently engaged with central banks in many countries. And the instant payment rails, that Mojaloop that you’re talking about, some countries have built. It’s more for interoperability, but yeah.

So, I mean, Visa and MasterCard and PayPal just announced their agentic systems, you know, AgentPay for MasterCard as an example. So I assume that there’s a lot of demand and interest for agentic payments right now. Where, where is your head at and, you know, where’s the technology at for, you know, democratizing agentic payments?

To be very frank, very early days for us. Very early days. We were, you know, we’re buried very deeply into trying to solve a problem that has been given to us.

And obviously these technologies are coming up very fast. Obviously Visa and MasterCard and PayPal, the likes of them have the ability to actually put it out there quite fast. We will benefit from it, of course, right?

But we’re doing a catch up game on that. Okay. That’s the reality.

So, you know, you talked about central banks as customers, you’re based in the UAE. So, you know, who else are using your platforms, you know, for integration and so forth? Primarily central banks or their nominated payment service utilities, right?

Because different, different, different countries have different models. There is more of a trend of central banks actually stepping in and taking controls. We saw what happened in Turkey with the BKM.

Here in South Africa, the Reserve Bank has actually taken 50% stake in BankServe very recently. The UAE central bank has created its wholly owned subsidiary and so on and so forth. But in many other countries, you still have a model whereby commercial banks are running a payment services utility and they are also our customers.

Yeah. And full disclosure, I’m actually on the advisory board for Nebraska, which is the open finance initiative for the central bank in the UAE. So, obviously you mentioned the real time rails.

And if we’re talking about AI based payments, it’s going to be real time. But we also have now this big stable coin movement. So, I know from a card scheme perspective, Visa and Muscat are both fairly agnostic into that and they’re probably going to plug in, you know, stable coins at some point, you know, they’re experimenting with this right now.

But as we start getting more and more flavors of real time payments rails and more flexibility, and, you know, we are, you know, starting to build more and more autonomous infrastructure in this, you know, I can imagine a time in the future that let’s say you’re traveling and you’ve got your AI based wallet and you go into a new market or economy where you haven’t been before, that you won’t have to worry about what the payment rails at the back end are, that your wallet will be a smart enough to choose in real time, the right rails for the right transaction at this point in time. How close are we from that sort of system where you could switch out and choose different payment rails for a different sort of use cases in real time?

Can I be honest? Yeah. Complicated because…

That’s what AI is for though. Yeah, because I think regulation and regulators are trying to understand how to actually let this technology be used, especially when it cross-border money movement is a, is a complicated show topic. Right.

And this is where regulators wane. I know that there is… But they are thinking about it, right?

Of course. They’re thinking about it. They’re actually acting on it as well.

Right. So we see some stuff happening in the U.S. around the regulation around stable coins. I’ve seen it in UAE as well, but it’s early days because they’re figuring out what is the best model, right?

And within stable coins, the technology obviously is great. It’s a no-brainer, right? Sure.

And very, very cost-effective, future-proof, wonderful. However, the application of stable coin right now has multiple flavors as well. Sure.

USDC, USDC, CBDC. Private issue, bank issue, you know, CBDC, as you said, plus, you know, fiat-based or otherwise, right? So what I’ve seen, let’s say in UAE particularly, as you know, there are a few initiatives, one of them is a very large consortium, which was very recently announced between IHC, FAB, which is the largest bank, and ADQ.

And they intend to launch their own stable coin very, very, very soon. Whether it will become mainstream mass in near future, I’m not very sure. All right.

Well, MK, it’s been great to have you on the show. If there’s a central bank or, you know, large networks out there looking to modernize their rails and look at better integration from a regulatory perspective, how can they get in touch with you guys? Unitey.com.

U-N-I-T-E-Y.com. U-N-I-T-E-Y.com. As opposed to Unitey.com without the E, which is the gaming platform. So U-N-I-T-E-Y.com. MK, thanks for joining us on Breaking Banks today. Thank you, Brett.

All right, guys, that wraps up our exploration into some great startups out on the African continent and beyond with our partners CrossFin that supported us this week on the podcast. So that’s it for Breaking Banks this week. We will see you guys next week.

That’s it for another week of the world’s number one fintech podcast and radio show, Breaking Banks. This episode was produced by our US-based production team, including producer Lisbeth Severins, audio engineer Kevin Hirsham, with social media support from Sylvie Johnson. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to tweet it out or post it on your favorite social media or leave us a five-star review on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Facebook, or wherever it is that you listen to our show.

Those actions help other people find our podcast. And in return, that helps us build an audience that can be supported by sponsorship so we can continue to provide you with our award-winning content every week. Thanks again for joining us.

We’ll see you on Breaking Banks next week.