Monzo confirms an extension of its Series G funding round, raising £50 million from San Francisco-based venture firm, Octahedron Capital among existing investors.
The top-up comes with Monzo having “strong revenue growth and performance despite the pandemic”, according to a person close to the firm, Sifted reported.
Read also: Revolut staff now have permanent flexible working options
Last December, Monzo raised £60 million funding at a valuation of £1.25 billion. The new funding will take the amount raised by the digital bank during the pandemic to £175 million.
Monzo Bank has attracted 4.99 million customers as it also serves about 70,000 business customers, which means more than twice the number of business customers it served last summer.
Monzo also claims to have about 100,000 customers who use its premium account options, Monzo Plus and Monzo Premium.
However, last year Monzo Bank’s losses jumped from £47.2m to £113.8m amid a hiring spree, marketing and US expansion. This came after the CEO Tom Blomfield, became Monzo’s president and TS Anil stepped into the role of CEO.
“Honestly nothing fazes TS. He really can handle high amounts of stress and never shows it. I watched him transform a business and lead through the financial crisis,” said Meghan Connolly, who worked under Anil at Standard Chartered.
Tom Blomfield who co-founded Monzo Bank 2015, left the digital bank definitely during this January, citing “challenges” from the pandemic, TechCrunch reported.
“Taking on a bank that’s three, four, five million customers and turning it into a 10 or 20 million customer bank and getting to profitability and IPO-ing it. I think those are huge exciting challenges. Just honestly not ones that I found that I was interested in or particularly good at,” Blomfield told TechCrunch.
It will be interesting to see how Monzo manages this year under new leadership and if it becomes profitable as its main competitors Starling Bank and Revolut became last year.
