Monese Raises $10M to take its Instant Banking Account Across Europe

Monese are happy to announce that our 100% mobile banking service, has raised 10M USD from a suite of top investors from around the world including Anthemis Exponential Ventures, Korea Investment Partners and STE Capital to expand into mainland Europe and become the service of choice for expats, migrants and those seeking an alternative to traditional banks.

Norris Koppel, CEO at Monese commented, “We are incredibly excited to close a heavily oversubscribed funding round with a suite of top investors at our side. The money raised will be key in helping us launch Euro current accounts and become available to customers in other European markets as well as a host of new features like direct debit and credit services to ensure customers have everything they need to stay in complete control of their finances.”

Monese have had an incredible past 18 Months. Since their launch in September 2015 they have signed up over 40,000 customers from over 179 different countries who have collectively made over 1.8 million transactions, moving £150 million.

Their focus is on accelerating banking into the ‘global on-demand age’ and on using technology to ensure that everyone has access to the financial tools they need to build their lives, irrespective of their credit history or residency status.

Customers can undertake all of their everyday banking tasks with a Monese account, including receiving a salary, shopping in store or online with their Monese contactless debit card, paying friends, family or bills with UK bank transfers, or sending money abroad to any of 8 currencies for up to 8x less.

Monese have won multiple awards including Best Challenger Bank at The European Fintech Awards, the Horizon 2020 Award for Research and Innovation and Best Consumer Payments Programme at the Emerging Payments Awards 2016.

This fundraise brings with it the backing of high calibre investors Anthemis Exponential Ventures, one of the world’s leading FinTech investors, STE Capital and a strategic investor Korea Investment Partners, South Korea’s leading VC with $1.5 billion under management and with recent investments in the Korea’s first Internet-only bank Kakao Bank. The deal represents Korea Investment Partners’ first investment in a European startup. Our early backers SmartCap and Seecamp also invested.

By MONESE