From a childhood marked by hardship on the Cape Flats to leading South Africa's fastest-growing digital banks, GoTyme Bank CEO Cheslyn Jacobs says the University of the Western Cape didn’t simply give him a qualification. It changed the trajectory of his life.

Cheslyn Jacobs, CEO of GoTyme Bank and proud UWC alumnus, continues to make his mark in South Africa’s financial services sector, bringing innovation, leadership and purpose to the banking industry. Image: GoTyme Bank

Cheslyn Jacobs doesn't use the term "life-saving" lightly. But ask what the University of the Western Cape (UWC) means to him, and that’s the term he reaches for.

Growing up on Cape Town’s Cape Flats, Cheslyn was surrounded by circumstances that have impacted the lives of far too many young South Africans for the worse. Gangsterism, addiction and hardship were never far away. His father, who would later become a pastor, spent years caught up in that world.

Rather than allowing that past to define him, Cheslyn chose to learn from it. “How do I make the best of having a father like mine?" he remembers asking himself. His answer became a philosophy he still lives by today: never waste a crisis.

If his childhood built his resilience, UWC expanded his horizons.

Arriving on campus, Cheslyn encountered a South Africa far bigger than the one he thought he knew. Students from different communities, cultures and backgrounds challenged assumptions he had carried throughout his childhood. The University, he says, “cracked my world open” long before it launched his career.

UWC alumnus and GoTyme Bank CEO Cheslyn Jacobs. Image: GoTyme Bank

Studying Industrial Psychology also gave Cheslyn something unexpected: a fascination with people. Long before he was building banking products, he was learning what shapes human behaviour and decision-making. Looking back, he sees a direct line between his degree and the human-centred leadership philosophy he champions today.

The start of his UWC career was not promising. He drifted into what he now calls the “cafeteria culture” of university life, content to socialise and do what numerous students do. Then came the moment that changed everything. Janine, his girlfriend at the time and now his wife, gave him an ultimatum: find direction or lose the relationship.

“That forced me to find purpose,” he says.

That purpose wasn’t built around becoming successful. It was built around becoming someone different from the adult role models he had grown up with - the sort of people he never wanted to become. The timing was critical. “The sooner you crystallise your purpose," Cheslyn says, “the more effectively it can shape your future.”

After graduating, Cheslyn joined one of South Africa’s leading mainstream banks before taking what many would have considered a risky decision, leaving a major financial institution to help build an entirely new kind of bank. It was a gamble that would eventually become one of South Africa's biggest fintech success stories.

Yet, success, he insists, has never been about talent alone. “Other people have talent,” he says. "But I have confidence." That self-belief is core to the advice he shares with young people: always back yourself to the hilt.

Today, Cheslyn believes South Africa's greatest challenge isn't a lack of potential but a lack of access, particularly access to knowledge. It explains his passion for education, financial literacy and creating opportunities for others to discover what UWC helped him discover years ago: that where you begin does not determine where you finish.

It also explains why GoTyme Bank's purpose — Unlock Human Potential — feels so deeply personal to him. In many ways, UWC unlocked Cheslyn’s potential. Today, he hopes to help unlock South Africa’s.