The Monzo Pivot, or how challenger bank transformed itself in just 2 years 🚀; Why the hell Stripe needs $3 billion? 🤔; Africa’s first FinTech unicorn in 2023 🦄
FinTech is Eating the World, 2 February
Hey Everyone,
Happy Thursday! Today’s issue is the best one this week so far! We’re going to look at The Monzo Pivot, or how challenger bank transformed itself in just 2 years (deep dive & unpacking all the things that Monzo did right), answer the question of why the hell Stripe needs $3 billion (+ a few bonus reads on Stripe), and Africa’s first FinTech unicorn in 2023 (more should come soon!). Let’s jump straight into the awesome stuff 🌶
The Monzo Pivot, or how challenger bank transformed itself in just 2 years 🚀
Investor update 🔔 British challenger bank Monzo just posted its latest earnings report. The news was shared in a Crowdcube investor update with the 47,677 backers who’ve supported FinTech across four crowdfunding rounds since 2016.
And the numbers are beyond impressive. Let’s take a look.
The numbers 📊 Here are Monzo’s most important facts & figures:
UK neobank posted a narrowed loss of £119M, down from around £130M in 2021.
Monzo revealed that its annualized revenue in December 2022 stood at £440M, up around 2.5x on the previous year. That’s super solid! 👏😳
The neobank is now also cash flow positive since October, hoping to break even in 2023.
Although the FinTech didn’t break down which products had driven its revenue growth, it said there are now over 350,000 customers subscribed to its Monzo Plus or Monzo Premium plans (priced at £5/month & £15/month respectively).
Over 200,000 businesses bank with Monzo, a portion of which presumably pay £5/month for Monzo’s Pro business account.
Overall the bank has now reached 7M customers, averaging 150,000 new signups each week, making it the 7th largest UK bank by the number of customers. Nice 👌
A throwback 🔙 To put these numbers into perspective, we must remember that just 2 years ago Monzo was balancing between life and death:
So how did we get here? 🤔 In essence, there are 5 main things Monzo did, and it did them flawlessly. Let’s look at the Monzo Pivot.