GoTyme Bank has confirmed it has signed up to Catastrophe, the industry coalition campaigning against draft rules that would bar South African companies from making cross-border payments in cryptocurrency, saying the country’s regulatory framework should apply “consistent standards to equivalent financial activities, regardless of the technology used”.
“This is not a position on whether crypto should be regulated – it should be,” bank spokeswoman Pontsho Ramontsha told TechCentral. “It is a position on how: consistently, fairly and aligned with regulatory purpose rather than technology labels.”
The digital bank, which dropped the TymeBank name this year and says it has just over 13 million customers in South Africa, now appears on the campaign’s website alongside founding members VALR, Luno, EasyEquities and AltCoinTrader.
VALR CEO Farzam Ehsani said last week that the coalition had the backing of 203 organisations and 5 677 individuals, two weeks after it went public on 9 September. The numbers, he said, showed “how much support there is to revise what the regulators have put out”.
“Inconsistent rules can create unintended incentives,” Ramontsha said. “When regulators apply strict standards to banks but ambiguous standards to unregulated offshore platforms, crypto activity does not disappear; it can instead become less visible and traceable, with fewer opportunities to embed consumer safeguards.”
The bank also has a commercial stake. Regulatory clarity, it said, would allow “banks to participate in evolving payment infrastructure and settlement rails”. Its sister bank in the Philippines, a joint venture between Tyme Group and the Gokongwei Group that also trades as GoTyme Bank, launched crypto trading in December last year in partnership with trading infrastructure provider Alpaca.
Not final
The Catastrophe group objects that the draft crypto asset manual published in August by national treasury and the Reserve Bank’s financial surveillance department would stop local companies using licensed crypto providers for cross-border transactions that are lawful through a bank. It also opposes a rule that lets individuals move crypto from a regulated platform into a personal wallet, but not back again.
The coalition’s argument echoes Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago, who said this month that similar payment activities should face similar regulatory expectations “whether they are performed by a bank or a fintech”.
But Nicola Brink, who heads the Reserve Bank’s financial stability department, warned last November that “as crypto payments are borderless, they present an avenue to circumvent exchange controls”. Treasury then signalled in February that crypto would be brought under exchange control rules.
The Reserve Bank has told TechCentral that the rules are not final and “remain subject to refinement following the consideration of all public comments and stakeholder engagements”. Public comment closes on Wednesday, 30 September. – © 2026 NewsCentral Media
