N26 : Transforming the Financial-services Industry in Europe and Beyond
There is no denial in the fact that technology has taken a huge leap in the past few years and has introduced us with many useful inventions. Whether it is booking a hotel online, getting food delivered at your doorstep, or making big financial decisions on a mobile app, everything is possible now. In simpler words, technology has made our life easier. One such convenient result driven by the use of technology is N26, a Berlin-based fin-tech mobile bank, that has changed the way people of Europe do banking.
N26 is a banking startup that was founded by Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal in 2013. Stalf and Tayenthal both are natives of Vienna Austria. Stalf has got a master’s degree in accounting and finance from St. Gallen University in Switzerland, whereas Tayenthal is a Master’s degree holder in Law from the Vienna University.
After completing his education, Stalf started working with an investment bank. But soon, he moved to Berlin and joined a tech incubator called Rocket Internet, where he worked on fin-tech-related projects. The work he was doing here was quite different from what actually was done in the finance domain of the country. Here, he learned more about how technology can be mixed with finance. He realised that traditional banking is way more complicated, and technology can easily transform the outline of banking operations.
Stalf left his job in 2013 to found N26, and the together with Tayenthal, launched the first product of the company in 2015. Founding a fin-tech company in a city like Berlin, where people clearly avoid visiting a bank and does not even use credit or debit cards was not an easy task.
When the two were working on the startup, like every other newbie, they were looking for investors. According to the co-founder and CFO N26, Tayenthal, “They did not take us seriously. If we called ten banks while looking for a partner, about eight of them did not pick up the phone.”
It took them 12 months to launch their first product, and as soon it was launched, it was a huge success. The company gained over 80,000 users just in one year, and the next year, the number was doubled. According to the two co-founders, they never intended to build an online bank, but “Spotify” banking. Stalf calls Uber and Spotify the inspiration behind N26.
The N26 mobile app started with a collaboration with a local bank, and now, it has major names as its partners, like Mastercard, Clark, TransferWise and Auxmoney. Prominent investors, like the Chinese tech giant Tencent, German insurer Allianz, and Peter Thiel’s (PayPal co-founder) venture arm Valar Ventures, are backing the company.
The company does not have any physical bank branches, and there are no ATM machines have been installed in the cities. But the users can use other bank’s ATMs for the withdrawals, and the N26 credit/debit cards are accepted at over 7,000 affiliated retailers, without any extra usage fee. In fact, the users can open a bank account on the N26 app in just eight minutes.
N26 was named as one of the hottest fin-tech startups in 2016. In 2017, the company started its efforts to expand in the US and the UK. In 2018, Stalf received the ‘Founder of the Year’ award from the University of St.Gallen.
The basis of the success of this very app was the user-friendliness it provided to its users. According to the CEO, Stalf, they wanted to create an app that people would love to use, as most of the banking apps are complicated, and the users are bound to use these apps.
In January 2019, the company raised a good amount of $300 million from investors in a round of funding, and ultimately, valued at $2.7 billion, becoming the first fin-tech Unicorn in Europe. The company is currently operating in 24 European countries, including Germany, Austria, France, Spain, and Italy. It is providing its services to over 2 million users signed up to the app and is attracting 2000 users a day.
Since its inception, the company has raised more than $500 million, and over 1000 employees are, currently, working full-time for the company. The company is continuously working to maintain the security of the app and improving its service.
N26 co-founders count their startup among the breed of digital banking challengers, like Revolut, Monzo, Starling and Atom, who are on the mission of replacing the traditional way of banking.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.