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While the UK FinTech unicorn Monzo is currently struggling, the German €3B N26 evidently seems to be on an unstoppable growth trajectory despite high losses. In an interview with CNBC, N26 said net losses at its core European business came in at 110 million euros in 2020, down from €165M in 2018. N26 has not yet disclosed a revenue figure for 2020. In 2019 gross revenues doubled to nearly €100M, from €43.6M a year earlier. The total 2019 operating losses, including the U.S. and U.K. markets — N26 pulled out of Britain in 2020 — amounted to €216.9M. N26 didn’t disclose full losses, including international markets for 2020.
Founded in 2013, the firm has raised a total of $800 million to date, from investors including Chinese tech giant Tencent and billionaires Peter Thiel and Li Ka-shing. It has also started looking at deploying its war chest of funds to buy a fintech competitor. N26 has attracted 7 million users globally.
The company has also started considering acquiring a fintech competitor. “We have started to look opportunistically at some interesting targets,” co-CEO Maximilian Tayenthal told CNBC. Moreover, N26 has plans to hire an additional 200 employees this year and is set to expand into Brazil to address the just under a third of adults not having access to a bank account.
2021 should be an exciting year for the European FinTech segment despite, or perhaps because of, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. TransferWise is also planning an IPO, as is eToro. Revolut and N26 are on a growth course; Starling Bank wants to make acquisitions. Only Monzo is evidently stumbling at the moment.
