RBS’s challenger bank Bo has reportedly selected Mambu as core banking technology provider. Mambu’s flagship solution will be delivered on a hosted basis, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Bo is RBS/NatWest’s digital alternative to the likes of Monzo and Starling, with former operations chief Mark Bailie leading the project.

Reportedly, around 100 staff have been briefed on the new project.

Bo is expected to launch to retail customers in 2019, with the aim of migrating one million Natwest customers to the new mobile platform. It will offer savings and deposits products to consumers.

Fintech Futures has reached out to Mambu and Bo; both firms have declined the request for comment.

For payments, Bo will be using Starling’s Payments-as-a-Service offering.

Mambu already has a couple of users in the U.K., namely OakNorth (which runs the system on the AWS cloud) and N26 (which uses Mambu’s tech in its home market in Germany and across international locations).

Founded in 2011, Mambu participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr New York, in 2016. The company’s CEO, Eugene Banilkis, presented Smart Consumer Lending: Platform and Scoring Architecture and discussed how Mambu developed its social, data-driven consumer credit scoring engine.

Mambu is also a veteran of Finovate’s demo-only event, having demonstrated its technology live at at FinovateAsia in Singapore in 2013.

South African challenger TymeBank has officially launched and is using Mambu’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) core banking system, reports Antony Peyton of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

As reported on 15 February, it went live on a limited basis in preparation for this formal launch.

The bank says customers will be able to open a Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) compliant bank account in Pick n Pay and Boxer stores, and get a Visa debit card.

This follows on from a soft launch in December 2018 when it went live at 20 Pick n Pay and Boxer stores. Since that launch it has got 50,000 customers.

With the bank up and running, it explains that it is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. This links with Mambu’s system, which is used as a ledger for customers’ accounts, and managing the debits and credits.

While not offering specifics, Mambu tells Fintech Futures that this is its “first bank client in the region.”

Chief information officer of TymeBank, Dieter Botha, tells BusinessTech that 180 IT staff worked on creating its digital platform.

The bank offers an Android app and the iOS app is currently in development.

Internal service orchestration, payment flows, and backend services are developed in Java as microservices on the Netflix stack, it explains.

According to Botha, TymeBank embraced Facebook’s React framework in developing the web-based customer channels, while the Android app was developed using Java.

It uses machine data platform Splunk’s cyber incident monitoring capabilities, which means the bank’s cyber-response team “listens” to more than 40GB of network traffic a day.

According to the bank, the kiosks in the Pick n Pay and Boxer stores are equipped with real-time biometric recognition.

Customers don’t require an ID document or any other paperwork to open an account. It takes under five minutes and they will be issued with a personalised, activated Visa debit card that can be used at any Visa merchant in the country.

TymeBank won’t charge monthly fees – meaning no fee for cash withdrawals at ATMs, no account initiation fee, no card issuing fee and no fees for the use of the card for payment.

It does state that cash deposits at Pick n Pay and Boxer stores will cost ZAR 4 ($.028).

On top of all that it offers “high interest on savings” – and says customers can earn up to 10% interest per annum on their savings after three months.

The Johannesburg-based digital bank was officially founded in 2012 under the name of TYME. In 2015, it was acquired by Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and became TymeDigital.

Three years later CBA sold it to African Rainbow Capital, which describes itself as a “fully black-owned and controlled investment company”.

The majority shareholding of African Rainbow Capital makes TymeBank – as it is now known – “the first majority black-owned retail bank in South Africa”, the new owner says.

Mambu demonstrated its cloud-native, SaaS banking solution at FinovateAsia 2013. The company is also an alum of our developers conference, presenting a discussion titled Smart Consumer Lending: Platform and Scoring Architecture at FinDEVrNewYork 2016.

Founded in 2011, Mambu is headquartered in Berlin, Germany. Eugene Danilkis is CEO and co-founder.

Mambu has signed a deal to implement its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based core banking system at Orange Bank‘s new location in Spain, reports Henry Vilar of Fintech Futures (Finovate’s sister publication).

Mambu has also confirmed that it recently completed a funding round, and said it will be revealing details about this soon.

Fintech Futures understands the value of this round is in the tens of millions, but it hasn’t been confirmed yet.

According to Fintech Futures’ sources, Orange Bank has also picked Mambu for one of its Eastern Europe locations, possibly Romania or Bulgaria.

These may be just rumors, however, as Orange Bank says: “For the moment the contract does not stipulate any other country. This will be seen later, depending of future deployments in Europe.”

It is understood that for these new locations, Orange Bank went through a selection process that Mambu won.

Mambu has declined to comment on the deal.

The French business of the bank uses the SAB AT system from French core banking tech supplier SAB.

In 2016, the French mobile operator acquired 65% of Groupama shares, to launch a bank, and leveraged its tech to do so.

For its mobile front-end, Orange Bank uses Backbase’s platform.

Mambu demonstrated its cloud native, SaaS banking solution at FinovateAsia 2013. A few years later, the company participated in our developers conference, FinDEVr New York 2016, presenting Smart Consumer Lending: Platform and Scoring Architecture, a look at the company’s collaboration with alternative lender, Lenddo.

Founded in 2011, Mambu is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.