TN Cybertech Bank: Is Nyambirai being coy about the possibilities?

Perhaps Tawanda Nyambirai is managing expectations, or maybe it is how he is communicating TN Cybertech Bank's aspirations. Calling it just a neobank does not do enough justice to the ambitions that the bank has. 

“Banks are heavily invested in infrastructure, the branch network, which is the traditional mode of delivering banking services. We said to ourselves, we have to transition from that.” - Tawanda Nyambirai, CEO TN Cybertech Bank

The CEO has been particularly vocal about going branchless. While that’s not a new idea in Zimbabwe, as highlighted during the recent Ideas Festival, it’s still a bold move. Nick Vingirai, Founder of Intermarket Bank, revealed that they attempted a similar model back in the late 1990s. However, the absence of a regulatory framework for branchless banking at the time stopped Intermarket from pioneering digital banking before the era of mobile money. How they would have achieved this without modern mobile technology remains a fascinating “what if.”

What TN Cybertech Bank is actually planning

What we had to concede is that the term “neobank” is a relatively new one in Zimbabwe because it has not been attempted, at least to our understanding, in what we know the word to mean. It is indeed a bank that has no physical branch network and operates completely online. Examples of this kind are common in South Africa, with the likes of Bank Zero and Tyme Bank being the most popular. Those entities operate exclusively within the devices of customers and have no physical branch infrastructure. However, what Tawanda Nyambirai intimated to us about TN Cybertech Bank is equal parts exciting and interesting;