Monzo reaches £1m in 96 seconds in record breaking raise
By Crowdcube. 3rd Mar 2016
Monzo, the mobile-first challenger bank, has reached its £1 million fundraising target in 1 minute 36 seconds. The Passion Capital backed mobile bank received unprecedented interest for its crowdfunding campaign from more than 8,500 people. Today 1,898 people invested an average of £527 each and will share 3.33% equity in the soon-to-be bank via the UK’s most popular investment crowdfunding platform Crowdcube.
Of the people who invested, 40% were existing Crowdcube members, who invested 47% of the total amount raised, showing how businesses can engage their own network, as well as our growing crowd of over 250,000 people, in a crowdfunding raise on Crowdcube.
Crowd investors share the same voting rights as Passion Capital, one of Europe’s leading early stage venture capital (VC) firms that has already invested £7 million in Monzo, the largest amount of money ever invested by the firm.
Monzo is part of the wave of fintech businesses challenging the UK’s financial services sector through its smart use of technology and customer-first attitude. It is designed around a generation (so called millennials) that rely on their smartphones to access services and products they want, something the traditional banks are being slow to do, and are mistrustful of traditional banks.
Monzo turned down additional investment offers from notable international investors in order to include its customers in this investment round.
Tom Blomfield, CEO of Monzo, said:
“We’re the first bank to enable customers to become shareholders through a crowdfunding platform. Our customers are already helping us to build the bank from the ground up by alpha testing the mobile app. They deserve to be a real part of our journey to be a bank that people can trust and puts them back in control of their finances. We want to continue to involve them in future funding rounds.”
This is Monzo’s second fundraise as it gets ready for a public launch and an accelerated roll-out of its services later this year.
Along with owning shares in the bank, investors received an exclusive “Monzo Investor” Mastercard® Prepaid Debit card and access to the Monzo iPhone app, skipping the 30,000 strong waiting list.
The eagerness of the crowd to get behind Monzo highlights the real need for change in banking and the increased interest in Britain’s thriving fintech sector.
Eileen Burbidge, Partner at Passion Capital, commented: “This is a great start for Monzo as it embarks on a trajectory that could see it becoming a company the size of Facebook or Google for banking.”