GoTyme breaches 1M users in PH

MANILA  -Gokongwei-backed GoTyme Bank has hit more than one million users in the Philippines, marking a new milestone for the financial institution as it aims to double its customer base in the country by yearend.

GoTyme president and CEO Nate Clarke told the Inquirer on Tuesday that it took them just under six months since they began operations in the Philippines in October last year to reach this milestone, expressing optimism that growth would even accelerate during the second half of the year.

“We are challenging the team to reach the second million in half of that (time),” Clarke said in an interview.

For his part, GoTyme Bank co-CEO Albert Tinio expressed confidence in their product, citing that it had gone “viral” since they started operations in the country.

“The rate at which activations, and not just activations but quality activations, is growing. These are the people who open an account and put in money,” Tinio said during the same interview.

Both officials said growth was driven substantially by the hundreds of kiosks that they have since put up in Gokongwei malls and retail establishments, which include Robinsons department stores and Southstar Drug branches, among others.

Clarke said they have 345 of these kiosks nationwide where people aged 18 and above could open an account and be issued a Visa debit card within five minutes by submitting a single, valid identification card, a Philippine address and a mobile number.

As with other banks, all deposits of up to P500,000 are insured by Philippine Deposit and Insurance Corp.

All savings accounts with the GoTyme Bank are given a 5 percent interest rate, without any minimum maintaining balance or deposit requirement.

“GoTyme exists to unlock the financial potential of Filipinos and we are going to do that by providing a preferred banking experience to everyone. Our biggest challenge is to consistently and genuinely provide the preferred banking experience to the next 10 million customers,” Tinio said.

The digital bank plans to have a total of 450 kiosks across the Philippines by the end of the year, with more of these to be put up in areas outside Metro Manila where they already have a strong presence.

According to the officials,  GoTyme also plans to offer more financial products in the near future, citing in particular several investment instruments including stocks, loans and even cryptocurrency.

GoTyme, a partnership venture between the Gokongwei group and the South Africa and Singapore-based Tyme, is one of the six digital banks licensed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.