British private equity firm Pollen Street Capital has acquired 10% stakes in Dutch challenger bank Bunq for €193 million, raising its valuation to €1.6 billion. The investment round is pending regulatory approval by De Nederlandsche Bank.
With this capital injection, Bunq will incorporate M&A as its business growth strategy by acquiring Irish lender Capitalflow Group.
The company, founded in 2012 by serial entrepreneur Ali Niknam who invested €98.7 million of his own capital into bunq, is a self-funded challenger bank that branched into 30 European markets without VC funds.
During the last year, bunq said that it had doubled its user deposits for the third time in a row and the challenger bank passed the €1 billion in user deposits earlier this year.
“bunq was founded to challenge what banking is and can do. By putting our users first we have created a bank that is super focused to make life easy in a sustainable way. We’re extremely excited to join forces with Pollen Street Capital to further expand the bank of The Free throughout Europe”,
said Ali Niknam, Founder and CEO of Bunq.
“Combining the SME lending expertise of Capitalflow, the digital execution capability of bunq and the ‘customers first’ approach of both Capitalflow and bunq creates a really exciting, high growth and self-sustaining platform with a pan-European reach that will mark a new standard in European digital banking.”
said James Scott, Partner of Pollen Street Capital.
Featured image credit: Bunq
