EXCLUSIVE: “Everywhere You Go” – Bianca Zwart, bunq in ‘Discover Money20/20’

bunq set out to build a bank that travelled across borders – just like its users. Bianca Zwart tells us why staying close to them has made it not only popular, but also profitable

Uber drivers are famously never shy of offering an opinion.

Who won’t make it to the end of Big Brother. Where to get the best balti in Birmingham. Why Brighton won’t win the FA Cup.

They’re fun, fleeting, usually forgettable conversations. But when one driver started complaining about banks’ customer service on a ride through Dublin, his fare sat up and listened closely. The passenger in the back was Bianca Zwart, Chief Strategy Officer for bunq – one of the most successful neobanks in Europe.

“The driver was talking about how no bank really gave him what he needed,” she says. “So I started telling him about bunq. I wasn’t looking for market research, but at the end of the drive, we downloaded bunq and started using it. And he actually gave me very interesting insights, things I hadn’t thought about. That conversation led to product fixes that are alive today.

“It proves that great ideas don’t come from boardrooms. They come from real moments with real users, people on the street. Moments like that are vital for us.”

It’s apt that an improvement to the bunq mobile banking app should come from an encounter whilst travelling, as the bank itself is the product of and for a new generation of worker-travellers. They go by many names – digital nomads, global nomads, remote workers, telecommuters – but they share the same lifestyle. They are no longer confined by the traditional employment norms, conducting their working lives remotely, and moving internationally.

According to Statista, more than 35 million people considered themselves to be in the digital nomad employment category in 2022. A report by the WYSE Travel Confederation said it expected the global number of digital nomads to rise to about 60 million by 2030. Notably, roughly half of them are millennials (28-43 years old).

This increase, fuelled by technology, the desire for a better work-life balance, and cost-effective living, made possible by a more flexible global business community, stimulated the need for a banking alternative to that offered by incumbents.

Into that vacuum stepped bunq. Founded in 2012 in the Netherlands and headquartered in Amsterdam, it became the first neobank in Europe to turn an annual profit in 2023. Like others, it pursued a fast-growth strategy, but not at any cost.

“That gets straight to the core of what makes us different,” says Zwart. “We wanted to focus on profitability first because of a very simple conviction we had. We thought if we can build a product that people truly love to use, they’ll be willing to pay a couple of euros or pounds for it, right? If we cannot get that right, what are we trying to do in the first place? So we wanted to not only build a user-centric product, but also build a user-centric business model in the process.”

Today, the bank serves 14.5 million users across 27 (soon to be 29) countries.

“We’re profitable now, which is not only very exciting, but it also sets us up for the long term, because we now have a proven model that only allows us to be successful if our users are happy. That keeps us focussed on the right things.” Those ‘right things’ remain in sharp relief because as, Zwart, acknowledges, ‘user expectations in banking have evolved faster than ever’.

With that in mind, its app provides a whole host of tailor-made features for today’s less-tethered customer, such as the ability to open an account in just five minutes, the provision of local IBANS, currency conversion, and a facility to create up to 25 sub-accounts instantly for travel savings, freelance income, or everyday expenses. There are a few bangs and whistles, too.

“Our users are not dashboards. They’re not numbers. They’re real people with real feelings, real needs. And we focus on building products that they want”

bunq’s app also allows users to review and share experiences that they’ve paid for on their card, such as a cheap eatery or a welcoming café in which to work. Users, or ‘bunqers’, can easily sort their incoming payments into budgeting pots and effortlessly save, with the app automatically rounding up each payment and depositing spare change into a savings account. They can also see where their friends and other bunqers are spending their time and what stocks and ETFs they’re investing in. Meanwhile, bunq Elite users get a tree planted for every €100 they spend, through a partnership with veritree.

Add into the mix, personalised budgeting insights, the ability to upload invoices and an eSIM feature for frequent travellers, offering internet access in more than 160 countries and savings of up to 90 per cent on roaming costs, and the bank is a one-stop shop for nomads. Zwart says that communicating with bunq users (existing and potential – such as that Dublin taxi driver) and acting quickly on their feedback, is very much part of the secret sauce in bunq’s success. The word ‘focus’ is a constant refrain.

“For us, staying ahead means staying focussed,” says Zwart. “It’s a super-crowded market, a lot of players doing lots of things, so it’s very easy to get distracted. “Everyone at bunq, in whatever role they’re in, speaks to users at least a couple of times a week through a ticket or through an interview, because our users are not dashboards. They’re not numbers. They’re real people with real feelings, real needs. And we focus on building products that they want.

“A great example of that is bunq Stocks, which we recently launched. We didn’t wake up one day thinking, ‘we need an investment product’. We heard from our users that they were struggling. They wanted to start investing, but they simply didn’t know how to. So, we built a product that made it so easy, anyone can do it. This all goes back to listening to people and providing what they want.”

Another key development at the end of 2024 was real-time speech-to-speech translation, as part of an upgrade to bunq’s AI assistant, Finn. Working across nearly 30 languages, this can now instantly translate the user’s speech, and the support assistant’s response in real time, negating the need for external translation apps.

At launch, Ali Niknam, founder and CEO said: “At bunq, we have always used technology to make life easy, and this update takes that to a new level. We’re excited to break down language barriers and simplify tedious tasks, making bunq more accessible (and fun) to users all over the world.”

The good, bad and the ugly given her credentials as a practising nomad herself, splitting her life between the Netherlands and Italy, Zwart was the obvious person to present bunq’s recent Global Living Report, a deep-dive into the benefits and challenges of the lifestyle. Compiled from a survey among thousands of nomads, it provides insight into the motivations and, ultimately, the requirements of this growing demographic.

“There’s is more to the story than meets the eye,” says Zwart.

For example, the biggest thing nomads from the UK, Germany and the Netherlands miss is friends and family. But for the French, it is the local cuisine that they pine for most. For Spaniards, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the weather. The Brits and the Irish say they long for their local humour, while one in 10 Dutch misses cycling.

Most digital nomads across Western Europe still worry about work-life balance, especially in the UK and Ireland. In Spain and France, people also worry about their financial wealth, and, across the board, feelings of instability and language barriers are a constant source of stress.

The report finds that individuals from the Netherlands are the happiest, but four in 10 French and Spanish nomads say they struggle with their mental health. That’s also true for a third of the Germans it spoke to. Zwart says that the people who work for bunq are motivated to tackle the issues highlighted in the report head-on and this is reflected in the services they offer.

She explains: “We put everything into solving problems. It’s what works for the user, not the bank, that matters to us. If we do that, everything else will follow. It’s in our DNA to approach things this way round. Our people are ambitious, yes, but not for ambition’s sake. We want to make a positive impact on our users’ lives. If we are not providing a good service, there is no point in us being here.”

This ‘user-centricity’ as Zwart calls it, is clearly paying dividends, so much so that in September of last year bunq announced that it was expanding its workforce by 70 per cent by the end of 2024, in readiness for a future expansion into the US and a re-entry into the UK. Its first foray into the US will be intriguing, as 42 per cent of Americans now hold passports, up from the meagre 10 per cent in the 80s, and, according to Statista, the number of digital nomads in the United States has continuously increased over the last five years, reaching 18.1 million as of mid-2024.

Equally fascinating, will be the return of bunq to the UK. The neobank previously operated in the country but pulled out in 2020, citing regulatory complications as a result of Brexit. In that time, the landscape has changed somewhat, with 50 per cent of people now possessing a neobank account in some shape or form, although bunq’s biggest rivals there are comparative minnows – Starling, Revolut and Monzo boast a combined user count of 50 million-plus.

“Yes, we’re going global,” says Zwart. “We’re building a product for people who live an international lifestyle, so they need their bank to be international, too. But wherever we operate, our fundamentals will remain the same – our users come first.”

This article was published in Discover Money20/20 2025, Page 14-15