The top five challenger digital banks that offer banking services to businesses in Spain are N26, Revolut, Monese, Bunq, and Curve. 1. N26
- N26 is one of the earlier fintech challenger banks that was founded in February 2013.
- N26 is a German startup which has never opted for financing via crowdfunding. But, it has had some hefty investments that resulted in total investment amount of around half a billion dollars, the highest out of its competitors.
- They have over 2.5 million customers and are active in 24 European markets with planned expansion into the US. They offer both premium and business accounts, plus their partnership with TransferWise allows for easy/competitive international transfers.
- The N26 online business bank account uses artificial intelligence to automatically categorize the spending and get 0.1% cashback for all purchases when an individual pays using his/her N26 MasterCard and reinvest the profits straight back into their business.
- The link to the website is here.
2. MONESE
- Monese was founded by Norris Koppel in 2013. Koppel, from Lithuania, had the common struggle of opening a UK bank account when first moving to England, this caused hassle in accepting salary payments and paying utility bills.
- Monese’s customers get both UK current account and a European IBAN, which allows for flexibility with salary payments and transfers.
- They currently have around 1 million customers, but their target market is different to that of other challenger banks, furthermore, in March 2019 they reported that two-thirds of new sign ups weren’t from the UK, but from mainland Europe.
- In October 2018, it launched its Monese Business account in the UK, available in 11 languages, and started progressively releasing it throughout the Eurozone – and is now available in Spain too.
- Their business account offers smart business where one gets a full overview of their payments with categorized Smart Transactions to maintain oversight on their cash flow.
- The link to the website is here.
3. REVOLUT
- Revolut, the London-based challenger bank, was launched in July 2015 and has over 6 million users which is the most when compared to their competitors. As of April 2018, they’re valued more than £40 billion.
- Revolut seems to be the challenger bank that has given the highest prioritization to the diversification of their offering like the most competitive currency exchange products (however fee-free withdrawals are limited to 200 a month, then a 2% fee), financial literacy advice, gamification styled cashback perks, both overseas medical and phone insurance, an open banking API that allows for B2B integration, ‘group vaults’ for joint savings and lastly, access to five cryptocurrencies on its closed crypto market.
- Their global business current account offers easy international payments, with prepaid business cards where one can save on transfer fees when they make payments to businesses around the world and an open API that is an automated cross-border business payments to send payouts to clients or employees and monitor transactions, according to their business needs.
- The link to the website is here.
4. BUNQ
- Bunq is a new digital bank from the Netherlands which launched in its home country in 2015, and announced its expansion into Spain and Italy in 2018.
- Bunq is the first bank in the country to have ever implemented Mastercard Identity Check, the latest implementation of MasterCard Securecode, a secret code that protects against unauthorized use of their card and a method that is a requirement for certain webshops.
- Bunq offers personal and business accounts and focuses on ease of use transaction accounts.
- The advantages of a bunq Business account is registering through their phone. No branch visits, no queues, and no paperwork. Everything can be done online, straight from the Bunq app.
- The link to the website is here.
5. CURVE
- In 2015, Curve, the London-based “over-the-top banking platform,” was founded in the UK by Shachar Bialick is a serial entrepreneur who has built and led numerous companies across several verticals including healthcare, finance, e-commerce, mobile telecommunications, and HR.
- This challenger bank lets an individual consolidate all their bank cards into a single Curve card and app to make it easier to manage their spending and access other benefits.
- Curve has raised $21 million from a group of world-renowned entrepreneurs, advisors and investors including Santander InnoVentures, Investec, Oxford Capital and Breega Capital. Other Curve investors include Speedinvest, Seedcamp, Connect Ventures, Taavet Hinrikus (TransferWise CEO & co-founder) and Ed Wray (Betfair co-founder).
- With Curve Business service, it provides automated expense reports, including receipts. Curve has no currency fees, so employees can save up to 5% when they travel abroad with 1% instant cashback on their business purchases at chosen retailers, it pays to spend.
- The link to the website is here.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
We started the research by looking for precompiled data on top challenger digital banks offering banking services to businesses in Spain. We leveraged a compilation of industry reports, leading publications, and expert blogs. We used the estimated total number of users and amount of funding these digital banks have. In addition, the identified banks are the only banks that are digital-only and offering business services in Spain.
Spain-fintech, fintechfutures.com, finder.com, learnbonds.com, and penser.co.uk are among the sources used to come up with a list of challenger digital banks that offer business services in Spain. Through this search effort, we were able to gather a list of top five challenger digital banks focusing on digital banking and banks that are digital only. From the list, we then cross-referenced their service offerings for businesses in their respective websites.
We did not identify 'the top banks' in terms of market penetration for percentage of all businesses in Spain these digital banks serve.
The following strategies were implemented to find the requested information:
First, we searched press releases in their respective websites but they do not have a list nor a percentage of their business customers in Spain. Data related to their business market was presented in general like the total funding, number of employees, staffs, and founders of the digital banks among others. Data related specifically to each country is not disclosed in their website.
Next, we searched corporate online databases in finding business information about private and public companies like crunchbase, hoovers, zoominfo, and LinkedIn among others. However, most of the data found were their funding, investors, estimated revenue, competitors, team members, and support service. Hence, we could not apply this strategy for the analysis of each digital bank's market penetration.
Lastly, we searched for profile analysis detailing the number of business consumers these digital banks serve on survey or consumer reports. Our primary focus was to find precompiled information specifically to market penetration of these digital banks. Instead, we learned that most if not all the articles are related to account opening process
and products, their services offered, security measures, and fees among others. Most of the articles also tackles the pros and cons of each digital banks. Information pertaining to the said subject is limited because data related to their business market is presented in general or data related specifically to each country has not been made public or organizations have not conducted any research, or they may not have made it public for internal reasons.