Amsterdam’s bunq has closed a record-breaking European fintech Series A round at €193 million. This now gives the bank a valuation of €1.6 billion. Not too bad for a company that until this announcement had remained bootstrapped by its founder Ali Niknam for close to a decade. Following a discernible pattern, Niknam reinvested €25 million of his own personal money in this raise. The additional €168 million was provided by Pollen Street Capital.
bunq is operating in 30 European markets, and as we reported earlier this year, surpassed over €1 billion in user deposits. All without any external financial influences. The bank has recently achieved its first-ever profitable month, and with the new funding, has announced that it’s time to go shopping. First up? Capitalflow Group, an Irish digital specialist business lender, and notably, now formerly owned by, you guessed it, Pollen Street Capital.
If you look back at Niknam’s previous wildly successful venture, (and wonder like I did, where is all this money coming from?) he’s the sole founder of Benelux region domain name, hosting, and VPS provider TransIP. His strategy of building up a powerhouse and then folding a number of competitors under the same umbrella has clearly worked.
Your author can only go and grab the popcorn and wait to see how the Bunq M&A strategy is going to unfold.
“bunq was founded to challenge what banking is and can do. By putting our users first we have created a bank that is super focused to make life easy in a sustainable way. We’re extremely excited to join forces with Pollen Street Capital to further expand the bank of The Free throughout Europe,” commented Niknam.
Cue the buying spree ...
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