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Nikolay Storonsky:
The Revolut founder and CEO of the company has not yet made any specific statements about a possible IPO
Photo: PEDRO NUNES / REUTERS
The fintech industry is currently the star and extremely popular among investors. Fintechs have developed into one of the most attractive start-up industries in recent years, says KPMG expert Ashkan Kalantary. And the money is likely to flow for a long time: "A golden decade is approaching for Fintech," predicts start-up investor Jan Beckers in an interview with manager magazin. Well-developed start-ups, i.e. established young companies that are in the late and final stages, as venture capital experts say, benefit disproportionately from the rain of money from investors. This can now be seen again using the Revolut example.
The UK digital banking app and competitor of N26 has now raised more than $ 800 million in a new round of funding led by Softbanks Vision Fund 2.
The valuation of Western Europe's largest neo bank thus screwed up to the equivalent of 33 billion dollars, the company announced on Thursday.
At the beginning of last year, Revolut had a valuation of $ 5.5 billion.
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Revolut plans global "super app"
Founded in 2015 by the former Credit Suisse dealer Nik Storonsky and the developer Vladyslav Yatsenko, Revolut has already won more than 16 million customers with its products such as foreign exchange, stock trading and cryptocurrencies.
Now the company wants to add a "global super app" to its product range - an app that customers can use not only to manage all their finances, but also to shop or book a lift at some point.
The Russian digital banking app Tinkoff could serve as a model for this.
As the message goes on to say, Revolut also wants to use the fresh money to expand in the USA and India.
N26 is aiming for a ten billion valuation before going public
But something is also happening with the German competitor N26, which is significantly smaller with seven million customers: According to Bloomberg, the Berlin-based company is in talks with investors who could raise the company's value to up to ten billion dollars in a financing round worth several hundred million dollars. N26 is supported by tech investors
Peter Thiel
(53) and
Li Ka-Shing
, among others
. It should be the last round of financing before the IPO. N26 did not want to comment on the report.
N26 had reported a net loss of 110 million euros for the last financial year and recently faced increased headwinds from supervisors.
The German financial regulator Bafin, for example, gave N26 a watchdog who monitors the company's efforts to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing.
N26 has a lot of catching up to do here, it said last May.
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