Headquartered in Berlin, a challenger bank N26 has reached 5million customers including 250,000 in the US alone. Till June 2019, N26 had 3.5 million customers and the rest 1.5 million, it added during the second half of 2019 into its list. Among previous 3.5 million, 1 million were added in first half of 2019. It means 2.5 million customers have been reached in year 2019 only with which the growth rate of the company seems to be on a faster pace.
For a while, N26 has been available all around the Eurozone and currently it allows the citizens of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, UK, Poland Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein to open their bank accounts in N26. In 2019, the bank also expanded to US by representing huge market opportunities competing with local players including Chime. According to the company, the reason of N26’s fast acceleration is its expansion strategies into the new market and the banking regulations in the US are quite complicated. These complications create difficulties due to which a challenger bank can’t be launched across all 50 states without any banking partner.
N26 is using a different operational model in the US by inking a partnership deal with Axos Bank. According to the deal, Axos bank is currently managing the money of customers while N26 is handling the transactions or interactions customers are making with their capital.
Currently, N26 is operating from five locations with 1500 employees including New York, Vienna, Berlin, Barcelona and Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo is a vibrant financial center of Brazil through which the company is planning to expand across Brazil.
Valentin Stalf, the Co-founder and CEO of N26 states, “5 million customers is a great achievement, but it’s not just growth that we are after. We are today, one of the biggest players in digital banking. But we have not forgotten our original mission – to challenge an industry that is ripe for change. N26 has proved that banking can be simple and intuitive through the use of technology.” He added, “In the long term, we want to reach 100 million customers worldwide.”