UK-based challenger bank Monzo announced on Wednesday it successfully secured £85 million through its latest investment round, which was led by General Catalyst, alongside Accel and the startup’s existing investors. The company’s valuation is now at $1 billion. Founded in 2015, Monzo describes itself as a fintech startup that “lives on smartphones” and is built the way its customers live. The company explained:
“Since we started we’ve been busy building the best current account in the world. We now have more than one million customers using our debit cards to manage their money and spend around the world. Download the app today to join the revolution.”
Monzo team reported that over the past 12 months they have grown the challenger bank to more than one million customers and at the beginning of this year, they asked customers to upgrade to full Monzo current accounts, and nearly 95% of our users came with us. Since then, they rolled out some great new features, including joint accounts, accounts for 16 year olds, and most recently, our super simple bill splitting functionality. The company also revealed:
“Alongside this, we’re seeing incredible levels of customer engagement, with our Net Promoter Score at around 80, monthly active customer numbers of nearly 800,000 and more than 35,000 people on our community forum.”
Monzo previously raised more than £4.2 million through three equity crowdfunding campaigns on Crowdcube. Monzo also explained that the latest investment round’s funds will be used to bring its services to even more people across the UK and let it continue to build exciting new features while ensuring users continue to receive the great customer service they are used to. As part of the announcement, Monzo announced it is going to crowdfund again as part of the funding round. The company added:
“In 2016 we raised a record-beating £1 million in 96 seconds through crowdfunding, and more recently raised £2.5 million with more than £12 million pledged. Later this year, we’ll announce a much larger crowdfunding round with Crowdcube. We’ll have lots more details nearer the time!”