Feeless mobile bank account business N26 has scored a massive $2.7bn valuation through a Series D financing round led by Insight Venture Partners.
The $300m round is the largest private equity fundraising round for a European FinTech business in recent years.
Berlin-based N26 has collected more than $500m to date from big-name investors including Tencent, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures and Earlybird Venture Capital.
The mobile bank currently operates in 24 markets across Europe, and has more than tripled its customer base in the last 12 months to more than 2.3 million people.
Since launching its first product in January 2015, N26 has processed more than €20bn in transaction volume, while customers currently hold over €1bn in N26 accounts.
N26 said it would use the proceeds of the latest round to drive global expansion, starting with the US launch of its mobile banking product in the first half of 2019.
Valentin Stalf, CEO and co-founder of N26, said, “Around the world, millions of people still suffer from bad banking experiences and high fees.
“With Insight Venture Partners and GIC joining our renowned group of existing investors, N26 has the support of the best investors globally to disrupt one of the largest industries in the world.”
Insight principal Harley Miller added, “It’s increasingly rare these days to come across such a massive industry which hasn’t experienced disruption by technology.
“N26 is the clear market leader in the European mobile banking industry; the company is ideally positioned to expand to the US market this year, and build a formidable global digital consumer brand.”
Late last year, Australian challenger Volt Bank launched its new online banking platform powered by Temenos’ financial software offering. FinTech startup SOL Wallet also launched its mobile and web banking offering in South Africa at the end of 2018.
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