Who's losing market?

RESURGENCE: DISCOVERY AND TYMEBANK HAVE MADE MAJOR INROADS

There is no doubt that Capitec has had a profound impact on the banking sector in the past decade - but in the past five years we have seen massive inroads from TymeBank in the mass market and Discovery Bank, particularly in more affluent segments.

TymeBank, which launched in 2019, has amassed 9.5 million customers and achieved operational breakeven last December. Discovery Bank crossed the one million client mark a few months back, and those customers have more than 2.3 million accounts. It, too, has reached breakeven and ought to report profits going forward.

But numbers of customers and transactional activity is but one set of metrics.

It is not difficult to have a huge number of customers generating revenue who are not profitable (ask the big four banks about their Mzansi account adventures).