Thursday 06 September 2018 1:50 pm

Challenger banking app Monese lands $60m series B from Kinnevik and Augmentum Fintech

UK and European digital banking app Monese has scored a $60m (£46.4m) series B fundraising round, led by venture capital firm Kinnevik.

London-based fintech investment vehicle Augmentum Fintech also got on board to contribute £5.3m, alongside new investors Paypal and Avios. Existing investors such as Investec's INVC Fund also participated.

Powered by an e-money licence, Monese has nearly 600,000 users of its current account with transaction volumes of over $2.5bn a year. Additionally the majority of its customers use Monese as their primary account – meaning they receive their salary or pay rent from the app – with 75 per cent of monthly funds going into Monese being salary payments.

The startup said its new monthly user numbers "have been tripling since the end of 2017", and it hopes to move into new geographies going forwards.

The firm's staffing numbers have quadrupled since its last funding round of $10m in January 2017, now standing at more than 140 employees. Some of today's $60m will go towards a new office in Lisbon, in addition to its existing offices in London and Tallinn.

Augmentum Fintech's chief Tim Levene said it had chosen to invest in Monese as it looks for firms that can "disrupt and take market share", which he believes Monese has achieved so far.

He also voiced support for the digital banking sector as a whole, saying "we believe that this is a market which will continue to grow".