Commonwealth Bank of Australia is on the prowl for tech acquisitions after paying A$40 million for South African digital banking outfit Take Your Money Everywhere (Tyme).
Johannesburg-based Tyme, which was initially a Deloitte Consulting project funded by mobile operator MTN before being spun out in 2012, designs and builds digital banking platforms.
CommBank CEO Ian Narev revealed the acquisition at a results briefing during which he explained that Tyme will help the bank target the emerging middle classes in markets such as India, China and Vietnam.
More acquisitions could be on the cards. Narev is quoted in the Australian as saying: "Have we got a huge slate of those things in front of us? No. But is this a sign of the sorts of things you could expect us to be doing if it made sense? Absolutely. We’re by no means at the end of that."
During the briefing, Narev also revealed that the CommBank app now has three million unique users who log in 15 million times every week, carrying out $2.5 billion of transactions.