UK-based mobile banking services provider Monzo, which counts among its investors telecoms firm Orange and online payment technology provider Stripe, was reported to be raising the equivalent of $130m in funding from a new, undisclosed US-based investor. The transaction may take several months to complete, as it is subject to regulatory approval from the Prudential Regulation Authority. If completed, it would effectively double Monzo’s latest known valuation to $2.6bn, thus turning it the UK’s second most highly valued fintech company, next to digital lender OakNorth.
Founded in 2015, Monzo runs a digital banking service that allows customers to open and manage current, joint and savings accounts via a mobile app. The company secured its full banking licence in 2017, after having originally offered only prepaid debit cards. Although it has reportedly grown its customer base to 1.2 million, it is yet to become a profitable business, having registered a $45.6m pre-tax loss in the year before February 2018.
The deal is part of the broader personal finance and wealth management space within fintech, which has received much attention from corporate investors in recent years, as the GCV Analytics chart below suggests. The number of deals in such enterprises peaked in 2017 at 52 rounds, estimated to be worth a total of $1.49bn, and it went down to 35 rounds, worth $1.37bn last year.
