Dutch challenger Bunq lands additional €44.5m funding to fuel international expansion
Dutch neobank Bunq has secured €44.5 million in fresh funding at an unchanged valuation of €1.65 billion, taking its total capital raised this year to nearly €100 million.
Bunq says it has raised €100m in funding this year
The latest funding round saw investors Ali Niknam (Bunq’s founder and CEO), Pollen Street Capital and Raymond Kasiman (Bunq’s chief information officer) taking part.
The mobile bank says it will use the fresh capital to fuel its growth and accelerate its international expansion. Back in April, the firm applied for a US banking licence with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in New York as it looks to expand its services to all 50 states.
“We’re rapidly expanding and have seen massive deposit growth,” comments Niknam. “With more and more people entrusting their money to us, we’re convinced that we should double down on our momentum and cement the way forward for future growth.”
Just last week, the challenger announced it had crossed 9 million registered users across Europe and claims to have doubled its user deposits to over €4.5 billion in the last four months.
Bunq says its user base grew from 5.4 million to 9 million “in just over a year”, with 50% of its user base directly contributing to the company’s revenue through subscription fees and interest income.
Dispute with investor
However, according to local news reports, Niknam reportedly had a falling out with investor Pollen Street Capital over the new funding round.
Niknam and Bunq had filed a case against the London-headquartered investment firm in the Court of Amsterdam on grounds that it was backing out of an agreement to put more money into the company made in an email by one of Pollen Street’s partners.
The court statement reads that the investor had concerns about Bunq’s business strategy, among other issues, with Bunq’s valuation having “declined significantly”.
The case was thrown out by the court, stating that there was not enough material to demonstrate that Bunq’s spokesperson had the authority to conduct the deal, adding “several brief staccato bullets in a Sunday afternoon email are not the way a reasonable person in the same circumstances as the parties would understand business to be transacted on the subject matter of this dispute”.
However, with the successful new round of funding, it seems that any disagreements have been resolved.
