30 employees turned into millionaires? Yes with Monese

Monese, a digital banking app for immigrants, is expecting to turn 30 employees into paper millionaires after its next fundraiser, which will reportedly value the company at £1bn.

Chief executive Norris Koppel declined to comment on the alleged valuation but said that Monese’s staff equity scheme had already minted over 20 paper millionaires – with several more expected at the next round.

Related: Immigrant Credit Access? Nova Credit raised $50M

London-based Monese, which has had over 2m downloads, is far from the only European fintech to have made early employees very affluent (at least on paper). TransferWise documented 33 paper-millionaires after being valued at $3.5bn in 2019, according to Sifted calculations, and Revolut has already made at least three executives into actual millionaires after they cashed out last October.

“Everyone working at Monese has employee share options… It’s about giving employees pride of ownership,” says Koppel. He adds that “giving shares was a better way to motivate staff than fear,” giving an insight into the entrepreneur’s managerial strategy as a possible believer of Frederick Herzberg’s two-factor theory.

Related: Financial marketplace for immigrants? Rewire.

“We earn more money per active customer than we spend on having this customer. This is across all our pricing packages including the free Simple package,” Koppel notes.

The company has raised $100m to-date compared to N26’s $680m and Revolut’s $837m.