N26, a German fintech startup, raised a Series D funding round of $300 million led by Insight Venture Partners. With participants include Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and existing investors such as Earlybird VC. The value of the online lender now reaches $2.7 billion.
According to data by CB Insights, N26 has joined the janks of Europe’s unicorns – or private start-ups valued at more than $1 billion. It is one of the most valuable unicorns on the continent. Just six other privately held European firms are more valuable: Global Switch, Roivant Sciences, Auto1 Group, Ottobock, The Hut Group, and BGL Group.
N26 is a startup that is building a retail bank from the ground up. It allows you to open a bank account and get a card in just minutes. After the account is open, everything is controlled from the phone or computer, allowing for a much better user experience than traditional banks.
The company is currently live in 24 European markets and has 2.3 million customers. With plans to expand to the US as well as other markets, this funding round made sense before the expansion plans.
Valentin Stalf, N26 co-founder and CEO, talked with TechCrunch about the future of the company: “I think we have the opportunity to really build a business with a hundred million customers globally. I truly believe in this. And that means that we’ll have to build the brand that you need for such as business. It’s going to be a big focus.
“If you look more at our company, we have now 700 employees in three locations around the world — Berlin, Barcelona and New York. We will open a couple of offices throughout the next year in Europe and maybe somewhere else in the world. So it’s really awesome to transform our company to be more global — we already have 50 different nationalities.”
