Challenger digital bank, N26, announced this week it now has 500,000 customers. Founded in 2013 by Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal, N26 claims to be Europe’s first mobile bank with a full European banking license and it has redesigned banking for the smartphone by making it simple, fast, and contemporary.
“Opening a new bank account takes only eight minutes and can be done directly from your smartphone. Users receive a Mastercard to pay cashless or withdraw cash all around the world. They can block or unblock their card with a simple click and send money instantly to friends and contacts.”
N26 currently operates in 17 countries, It operates in 17 countries: Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain and currently employs 290 people. Since January 2015, N26 has been available for Android, iOS, and desktop. It has also raised more than $55 million from investors including Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, Battery Ventures, and Valar Ventures, in addition to members of the Zalando management board, Earlybird Venture Capital, and Redalpine Ventures.
Speaking about the new customer milestone, the company stated:
“That number means a lot to us, and the best part is that we got here primarily because of organic outreach from customers just like you. To put that into perspective, we’ve been able to grow 124% year on year thanks in part to simple friend referrals and word-of-mouth recommendations. That’s about 1.500 new signups per day now, and it was about 1.000 per day just in March. Do you remember the last time you told someone about N26? When you got to explain how nice it is to just have a bank account for your smartphone? Maybe you’ve even noticed the number of friends you get to MoneyBeam has increased recently.”
N26 also revealed:
“At the same time, the number of total card transactions has also increased by 176%, and the total transaction volume reached €5.000.000.000. That’s nine 0s. 5 billion with a b. We pride ourselves on how easy it is to open an N26 bank account, and this number shows how comfortable people are using one. In fact, customers have used the N26 Mastercard in 207 different countries for transactions in 143 currencies. This is the reason why we love to talk about our travel benefits and the diversity of our customers. Our integrated products like N26 Black and TransferWise simply make foreign transactions less stressful.”
The company went on to publish a new infographic explaining its success. See below.
