Consumer fintech startups were massively successful in 2019, attracting millions of new users and disrupting traditional retail banks and financial services with mobile-first, consumer-oriented products. Despite the economic downturn in public markets and
the massive wave of cuts
at public and private companies in recent weeks, fintech startups have been raising a ton of money.
It feels like they’re all building a war chest to survive the economic winter as traditional banks continue to iterate so they can catch up and offer more user-friendly services. This is not the time to raise fees, slow down on product development or plans to acquire new users.
Nine-figure rounds
Back in January, I
looked
at challenger banks and their growth trajectories, but since then, they have managed to attract even more customers. According to the most recent figures:
-
Nubank
has 20 million customers;
-
Revolut
has 10 million users;
-
Chime
has 8 million users;
-
N26
has 5 million users;
-
Monzo
has 4 million users.
And that’s without mentioning Starling Bank, Atom Bank, Bunq, Bnext, Paysend, etc. At some point, there will be as many challenger banks as non-challenger banks — perhaps we shouldn’t call them challenger banks anymore.
Beyond these startups, trading app
Robinhood
recently reached 13 million users, international payments startup TransferWise
has 7 million customers and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase
has 30 million users.