Absa, South Africa’s biggest retail bank, has added six million customers to its group while accelerating its One Africa Strategy, CE Maria Ramos said on Tuesday.

This could make Absa one of the fastest-growing companies in the African continent.

Ramos told a gathering of analysts and journalists at a results presentation in Johannesburg that the bank’s customer base was boosted by two major deals the bank struck recently.

These deals included the acquisition of Edcon’s debtor’s book and the acquisition of some of Barclays’ African assets. Barclays is Absa’s parent company. Combined, the value of these deals amounted to more than R20bn.

“The Edcon deal increased our customer base by 3.8 million customers while the Barclays deal boosted our customer base by 2.2 million customers,” Ramos told the gathering.

In June last year, Absa acquired the accounts and receivables for the store credit cards of Edcon Proprietary Limited, one of South Africa’s largest clothing retailers.

Absa acquired Edcon’s card portfolio for approximately £800 million ($1.23 billion). Barclays said this was roughly the net book value of the portfolio receivables at the time of the transaction.

Through this long-term, strategic relationship, Absa said it would provide retail credit to Edcon customers and Edcon would be responsible for all customer-facing activities.

In December last year, Barclays and Absa agreed to a landmark deal in which Absa would acquire Barclays Africa for R18 billion ($2 billion).

The deal effectively transferred Barclays’ African assets to Absa, creating a unit with a network of more than 1.300 outlets and employing more than 43.000 staff across 10 markets.