Years ago, we had lots of press around all new initiatives in the fintech sphere.
Lots has happened: the UK banking scene adopted a lot of new features, corona brought uncertain times and some neobanks grew massively, others didn’t.
Personally, I do see an effect where there’s more innovation in areas with strong fintech presence.
All that made me wonder about the current situation: how are all those neobanks doing?
I know you lot love polls, do you also love tables?
I’ll focus the list on consumer banks that are (more or less) newly founded (so no youth cards from existing banks). One thing that stands out is that I seem to hear less about French neobanks.
Europe
Fintech
Country
Current valuation ($)
Revolut
UK / Lithuania
45B
Monzo
UK
5.2B
Starling
UK
2.5B
N26
Germany
6B
Lunar
Denmark
2.2B
Bunq
Netherlands
1.8B
BoursoBank
France
?
North and South America
Fintech
Country
Current valuation ($)
Simple bank
US
Chime
US
25B (from 2021, now lower in private share sales)
NuBank
Brazil
50B
Koho
Canada
800M (CAD)
Australasia
Fintech
Country
Current valuation ($)
Up
Australia
(Part of Bendigo Bank)
Update: this post is now a wiki, so update as you please
Latin America has quite a few electronic money and payment institutions that function like a bank, but don’t have a license to be a real bank. Will those count?
There’s also a big list of neobanks that are actually digital spinoffs of traditional banks.
Personally, I’m less interested in spinoffs from existing banks, as in general they seem to to be more about making the bank shinier for new customers but less about a fully new strategy / approach.
If you know other fintechs that are bank-like (even if not officially one) but are more or less standalone and influence consumer banking and financial behaviour, go ahead!
Thanks, that’s a new one to me.
Interesting to see how big the impact of language is: N26 is much more well-known and has a full EN site, while BoursoBank remained under my radar.
I do speak (some) French, but 90% of what I read online is in English.
In early days, those attempts were seen as a bit crazy, and look at how big the sector is now!
Just as our poll master (Hi Peter) kept missing obvious fintechs from their big polls, you’ve missed arguably the biggest* from Europe: Revolut, and definitely the biggest in the US: Chime.
Europe
