CBA takes online bank Tyme out of Africa

The Commonwealth Bank has bought a South Africa-based business called Tyme (Take Your Money Everywhere) that has developed a mobile online banking system targeted at developing economies.

CBA's chief executive Ian Narev said yesterday that the purchase, which cost around A$40 million, dovetailed with the bank's strategy for growth outside Australia.

Narev said Tyme "provides the ability for the emerging middle class in the markets that we are in to get very rapid access to a regulated bank account. It will supplement our strategy in India, China and Vietnam and give us new capabilities in target segments in these areas where the emerging middle class is creating very attractive opportunities - but we need also to recognise that in very many of these markets more people have mobile phones than have bank accounts."

Mobile phones have been hugely important in the delivery of banking services to developing countries such as India and Africa with the rollout of systems such as m-pesa which allows people able to prove their identity using a passport or ID card for authentication to transfer and receive funds using just a mobile phone.

Tyme was spun out of a Deloitte initiative back in 2012 to address the know-your-customer requirements of mobile banking. It uses a specially developed mobile "Tyme machine" to capture customer information and then authenticate that against data from Africa's Department of Home Affairs National Identity System and from biometrics stores.

The system can then authenticate people's identity remotely allowing them to open bank accounts from their mobile phone and make and receive funds transfers without having to visit a bank branch.

In addition to owning the Tyme IP, CBA gets 80 very technology savvy tech entrepreneurs that are now Commonwealth Bank employees working in Johannesburg, according to Narev.