Taking inspiration from this post…
… I was wondering what are our thoughts on fintech valuations? Who’s overvalued (everyone?) and who’s undervalued (no one?).
I’m also fascinated about who’ll go first for an IPO and what that’ll mean for the rest of the pack. Will the bubble burst or will they go to the moon?
N26 - Frankfurt (or Paris)
Monzo - New York
Starling - London
Revolut - New York with a subsidiary listing in Frankfurt (or even Shanghai)
Starling will be New York, majority backer is American and it’s easier for him to cash out there.
Anyone SoftBank funded is over valued, Klarna and Revolut are the obvious ones
I think they’re sadly a busted flush right now. They’ll have limited runway, would seem to have difficulties in interested in raising (didn’t they pull a crowdfunding round?). And typically the longer it takes to sell after they announce their intention the worse things look…
I actually think N26 has a good chance of imploding soon given the exodus of senior level executives. They barely have anyone left with the qualifications and experience to run a bank, so I think they’re on a knife edge.
N26 head of risk quits in escalating leadership crisis | Financial Times
Picking up the remains of N26 could be good business for Monzo. 
The banking license in the EU? Yep, the rest, I don’t
Depends on the valuation but you’d be buying the licence and the customer base.
Keep N26 platform running for 24 months while you build out Monzo Deutschland and other localised versions on top of the core platform, during which you’d migrate over your 7m new customers.
If you could pick them all up, plus a banking licence, for a euro a customer that’s an absolute steal. €100+ not so much.
Is Apple looking to become a bank, though?
After a bit of froth about big tech buying banks a few years ago, it seems to have calmed down with the consensus being they don’t want to be in the regulated consumer industry.
It is ripe for international consolidation though. I did think that Stripe might the big player in that, though.
I’m always a bit dubious where two stacks and systems run, and then the acquired one never quiet goes away, running two platforms for years, tech debt etc etc
Me too, to be honest. But I think if anyone can pull it off, Monzo can.
As I say, it would have to be at a price they couldn’t resist though.
(I think Starling would also be pretty good at it, but they seem to have decided that they’re BaaS outside the UK, so I’ve discounted them).
Monzo will IPO in 2024 in the NYSE with a valuation of £10 billion
I would value Revolut at approximately £10 billion at this moment
I agree Revolut is overvalued. But I think Monzo is very undervalued in your example. Another two years of growth, cement position in the UK, and if anywhere near as successful in the US I imagine $30-40bn. It looks like a lot of progress has been made building the US product, at some point they’ll actively start trying to scale and market that - it feels like they’re just quietly building at the moment, but that could be wrong.
While premature, this could still happen:
Monzo is clearly (re-)dangling the carrot in the US at the moment, and rumours around Apple Banking are growing. If you wanted a good foothold into tech-based, neo, no-branch, digital, app banking in the US, it’d be powered by (my opinion) - Monzo, Revolut, Starling - or - a new startup (potentially Apple itself)
And don’t underestimate any of these 3 existing digital banks. They’re already proven to work.
It’s difficult to tell with Monzo at the moment because the U.K. is the only market they’ve proven themselves in. That’s a serious potential limit they need to break free of. I completely agree that if they took off in America it would be a very different story. It’s a big if though.
Revolut is established in multiple markets. So on that alone I think it’s going to be more valuable.
Still, just because something goes onto the stock market doesn’t mean it can’t still be ‘overvalued’. Hype has a lot to do with it too and Monzo is a brand with a lot of hype.
As for stock exchanges. Monzo will have to be LSE unless things radically change, anywhere else it’s an obscure British brand no one has really heard of, not the ideal listing conditions.
OMG would i love for you to be right,I managed to invest £2000 in 2018 
Do we know the user base and valuation of the big US fintechs? I’m thinking Chime, Varo etc?
Also, anyone know how much Simple was acquired for and their user numbers at the time?
Chime was $25bn last year, Venmo $38bn, Varo is raising at the moment at a valuation $1.8bn which is a 30% down round
According to Statistica, Chime had 12m users in 2021.
The interesting one is how much Cash app would be if you took it out of Block’s total valuation
