NUMBER26, Europe’s most modern bank account, has raised US $40 million in a Series B financing round led by Horizons Ventures. Battery Ventures as well as Robert Gentz, David Schneider, and Rubin Ritteralso joined the round. Existing investors – namely Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Earlybird Ventures, and Redalpine Ventures – reiterated their commitmentto Number26 and completed the Series B round.
Number26 has quickly emerged as a leading player in mobile banking. The company has acquired more than 200.000 customers across 8 European markets in just 17 months since its January 2015 launch. The Series B funding will help accelerate additional geographic expansion and the integration of new products like savings, investment and credit to create a true FinTech platform.
“This financing round brings together some of the world’s leading investors. They provide the substantial financial resources and networks to accelerate our transformation of the banking landscape over the coming years,” explains Valentin Stalf, founder and CEO of Number26. “Even given our success to date, we believe we are only at the beginning of our journey to bring better mobile banking to millions of customers across Europe, transparently and at much fairer prices.“
“We are excited to join Number26 to lead the innovation in retail banking and play an important role to create the bank of tomorrow. Bringing transparency and focusing on an intuitive banking experience will set them apart, so we look forward to their success and to being part of their global growth in the future.” said Frances Kang of Horizons Ventures.
“Number26 has fundamentally transformed the traditional banking model,” says Maximilian Tayenthal, founder and CFO. “We selectively partner with some of the best FinTech companies around the world to offer a platform of products within a seamless, mobile-centric experience. We’ve also built a highly scalable technology base using an extremely lean organizational structure. This combination means we can offer significantly better products at much lower prices,” he adds.
The Series B round brings the total amount raised by Number26 to more than US $53 million.
About NUMBER26
The Berlin startup NUMBER26 GmbH offers the bank account of the future, geared especially towards the needs of smartphone users. NUMBER26 partners with Wirecard Bank AG, which is regulated under German law, to offer its services. Opening a new bank account takes only eight minutes and can be completed directly on the smartphone. Founded in early 2013 byValentin Stalf(30) and Maximilian Tayenthal (35), and led by the founders and Christian Rebernik (39) as CTO, NUMBER26 acquired more than 200.000 clients in 8 countries: Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy Slovakia and Spain in just 17 months and currently employs 140 people. Since January 2015, NUMBER26 has been available forAndroid, iOS, and desktop. In addition to Li Ka-Shing’s HorizonsVentures,BatteryVentures and Peter Thiel’sValarVentures, other NUMBER26 investors include members of the Zalando management board, EarlyBird Ventures, Redalpine Ventures, and Axel Springer Plug&Play, amongst others.
Website: number26.eu | Twitter: @number26 | Facebook: facebook.com/mynumber26
About Axel Springer Plug and Play
Axel Springer SE and the Plug and Play Tech Center, a leading startup investor and accelerator from Silicon Valley, joined forces to create Axel Springer Plug and Play. Its goal is to promote business models from the media segment and related fields having high market potential and trailblazing technology. The program includes 25,000 euros of seed financing, extensive mentoring, workshops, and access to the international network of the two partners. In return for promotion, participating companies give five percent of their company shares to the accelerator.
About Battery Ventures
Battery strives to invest in cutting-edge, category-defining businesses in markets including software and services, Web infrastructure, consumer Internet, mobile and industrial technologies. Founded in 1983, the firm backs companies at stages ranging from seed to private equity and invests globally from offices in Boston, the San Francisco Bay Area and Israel. Follow the firm on Twitter @BatteryVentures and find a full list of Battery’s portfolio companies here.
About Earlybird Venture Capital
Established in 1997 Earlybird has raised over €700 million in fund commitments. We have backed more than 100 companies, some of which have sparked significant innovations in business and technology and resulted in large scale ($1bn+) IPOs and trade sales. Earlybird backs European companies with global ambitions and our active portfolio currently includes 39 companies across the consumer Internet and enterprise services space.
About Horizons Ventures
The private investment arm of Mr. Li Ka-shing, is a leading investor in some of the world’s most innovative companies and disruptive technologies including Facebook, Waze, Spotify, Siri, DeepMind, Blockstream, Modern Meadow and Impossible Foods.
About Redalpine Ventures
Redalpine Venture Partners is an early stage investor focusing on disruptive and highly scalable business models. Their aim is to help talented entrepreneurs turn their visions into reality. To foster entrepreneurial success, Redalpine provides financial backing as well as relevant know-how and a reliable network.
Robert Gentz, David Schneider, and Rubin Ritter all earned a degree in business administration together at the WHU Otto-Beisheim Graduate School of Management in 2007. Robert and David co-founded Zalando SE in 2008 and Rubin later joined them in 2010 on Zalando’s Management Board.
About Valar Ventures
Valar is a New York-based venture firm founded by Andrew McCormack, James Fitzgerald and Peter Thiel.
Valar’s core thesis is that an increasing number of transformative technology companies are being started outside of Silicon Valley and the United States, and that the founders of those companies benefit from having a US partner that understands their unique challenges and opportunities.
