Digital banking is here to stay

Today marks an important day for N26—we crossed a huge milestone with the closure of our Series E funding round. With more than $900 million in funding raised in this round, N26 is now valued at more than $9 billion. 

For all our customers who put their trust in us and the way we reinvented banking, thank you for being part of the journey! For all N26ers, it’s an important and significant achievement—one that we are hugely proud of—and one which we couldn’t have reached without you.

We still remember very well where we started back in 2013. We founded N26 in 2013 at a time when banking was dysfunctional. We felt it lacked transparency. Fairness. Innovation. And we wanted to change that—with a bank that’s fully digital, all on your smartphone, so you could bank simply, conveniently and securely without ever having to go to a branch. At the time, not everyone was on board with the idea. In fact, we pitched the idea of N26 to 300 investors in total. The first 298 turned us away. 

Digital banking was an idea that just seemed so new—despite the fact that companies like Amazon, Spotify, and Netflix were all founded years before we came up with the idea of N26. But digitalization wasn’t where banking was back then.

That’s why today’s news is such an important moment for us. It confirms that without a doubt, digital banking is here to stay! 

We also have three new investors joining N26. The round was led by renowned New York-based tech investors Third Point Ventures and Coatue Management, and joined by Dragoneer Investment Group, as well as N26’s existing investors. The firms support our vision of building a truly global digital bank. Today, we have the most renowned investors in the world supporting our business, and they will be instrumental in accelerating our growth strategy. We are very happy to have them on board.

We couldn't have done this without you—our customers. You have always been the reason why we are here. You’ve informed the way we have built our simple and intuitive experience. Your needs have helped shape the development of our products. Your support has helped make us one of the leading players in digital banking today. Thanks to your support, we’ve scaled our business in Europe and beyond, grown our team, and become the bank that millions of people around the world love to use. We’ve proven that you don’t need branches, and that accounts can be made available for free, with a seamless and smooth banking experience. 

As we look to the future, we know that your expectations of us are evolving. We will never lose the spirit of innovation that makes N26 who we are. But we also know that we’re not a startup anymore. This funding round is not only a signal from our investors that they believe that digital banking is the future. It’s also a sign that we are now a leader that will define what our industry looks like in the years to come, with a new level of responsibility to do even better and do more to give customers the best and most secure digital banking experience possible. 

We are tremendously proud of how far we’ve come, and the dedication, energy, and entrepreneurial spirit of our teams. We are very excited about the future, where we know we will continue to change banking for the better.

Thank you for your support!

Valentin & Maximilian