The card market share of providers outside of the Big Four banks has doubled from 8% of advances in 2019 to 16% in 2024. Picture: iStock
TymeBank, which launched in 2019, has amassed 9.5 million customers and achieved operational breakeven in December 2023. There are three main areas in which the impact of competitors will be seen across the big four full-service banks:The impact of challenger banks on the rest of the market has been material in the past five years.According to BA900 data from the South African Reserve Bank shared by Standard Bank, the card market share of providers outside of Standard, Absa, FirstRand and Nedbank has doubled from 8% of advances in 2019 to 16% in 2024.
At the time of the sale to Discovery, the card JV had 300 000 active clients and this was the main building block for its banking unit. FNB had to fight to keep every single one of those customers, and to ensure it didn’t lose too many of its own customers to Discovery.