Monese raises $10m for expansion into Europe

Monese one of the UK's newest digital banks has received new funding from investors including Anthemis Exponential Ventures, Korea Investment Partners, and STE Capital.

The deal represents Korea Investment Partners’ first investment in a European startup. Korea Investment Partners is South Korea’s leading VC with $1.5bn under management and with recent investments in the Korea’s first Internet-only bank Kakao Bank. Early backers SmartCap and Seedcamp also invested in this latest round.

The new capital will allow the provider to expand into mainland Europe.

Norris Koppel, CEO at Monese commented, “We are incredibly excited to close a heavily oversubscribed funding round with a suite of top investors at our side. The money raised will be key in helping us launch Euro current accounts and become available to customers in other European markets as well as a host of new features like direct debit and credit services to ensure customers have everything they need to stay in complete control of their finances.”

Since its launch in September 2015, it claims to have signed over 40,000 customers from over 179 different countries who have collectively made over 1.8m transactions.

Monese has recently picked up multiple awards including Best Challenger Bank at The European Fintech Awards, the Horizon 2020 Award for Research and Innovation and Best Consumer Payments Programme at the Emerging Payments Awards 2016.