Aug 22, 2023

In as little as just over a year ago, fintech in Europe was seemingly at its peak. During this ‘heyday’, around 22% of European unicorns in the fintechs in the financial sector and fintech based in the region raised funding of over US$22 billion. It effectively made fintech the most well-funded sector in 2022. A little towards the end of the year however, and the market was affected by the global economic downturn, with most being jolted by rising interest rates and high inflation, with economists eventually anticipating an imminent recession. This led to substantial restructuring and mass layoffs across tech which, unfortunately including in fintech. Some of Europe’s most notable fintech startups like Klarna, Uncapped, Freetrade, and Zego surprised with their turns of mass layoffs. The downturn continued on in 2023. Giants like Klarna and Stripe, deemed untouchable thanks to their record valuations in the years prior, saw those same valuations plummet. More recently, US fintech Block set to close European payments app Verse. The former acquired the latter for its mobile payment service Cash App over three years ago with the ambition of boosting its presence in the European payments market. Despite all chaos, there remains some stability in fintech, stability of which has helped retain the positive outlook on the industry. Case in point? London-based neobank Black Banx. Setting a year’s worth of milestones in six months Launched to the public in 2015, Black Banx has grown from having 200,000 customers in that initial year to 28 million as of July 2023, with over six million of those said customers being onboarded in the first half of this year. Offering private and business Group accounts in 28 FIAT and 2 crypto currencies that can be used in over 180 countries, Black Banx is considerably one of the top fintech companies in Europe and the world. Onboarding an average of 1.3 million new customers as of July, the company is set to be well past 30 million patrons by year’s end. For context, Revolut, considered the most popular digital bank in Europe at the moment, presently serves around 20 million customers. Bunq, an Amsterdam-based neobank that had recently been in the news as it announced it will be entering the U.S. market, presently hosts accounts for over 9 million customers. Building a borderless financial system for EVERYONE While the likes of Revolut and Bunq are considerably popular in Europe, they and other neobanks have yet to be definitive borderless banks. For one, in order for customers to maintain accounts with either of the two, they must cover subscription fees that range between €2.99 a month to €17.99 a month. For its part, Black Banx allows customers to open an account without a sign-up fee. More importantly, the London-based company also aims to further its reach, ensuring that even unbanked and underbanked populations are able to make payments and manage their finances from almost anywhere in the world. With a 33% increased onboarding rate compared to the end of 2022, Black Banx demonstrates its ability to continue an already rapid expansion into new territories. And according to Black Banx Regional Chief Executive Officer MEA, Jabari Walker, this includes territories that the other top banks in Europe have yet to extend their services to. “With the recent launch of our West African branch in Liberia, we are seeing increased business growth in that region,” he shares. The number of Black Banx’s business clients increased by 16% overall and 28% in the MEA region. The company considers the increase in business clients as a positive growth indicator and it validates that Black Banx’s business offerings are extremely valuable. The group helps entrepreneurs focus more time on their business by reducing banking troubles. Onward and upward for the second half of 2023 Since launching to the public in 2015, Black Banx has seen a steady stream of success which in turn allowed it to maintain its yearly growth. The company followed up signing over 200,000 customers in its first year by expanding to new offices in the USA, UK and Hong Kong. It was also in 2016 that the company began offering crypto currency as a deposit method, and increased its customer base to 1 million customers. By 2017, it had tripled this number and expanded to offices in Singapore, Brazil, India and Russia. A year later, Black Banx it launched a fully fledged crypto currency trading with BTC and ETH as crypto currency, and opened offices in Canada. Expansion continued in 2019, as Black Banx had included operations in the UAE and South Africa, and grew to have as many as 8 million customers. This year also saw the company be ranked as one the fastest growing fintech companies globally, reaching a US$ 9.8 Billion valuation in less than four years. Then, despite the economic downturn resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Black Banx remained a silver lining in fintech, as it officially launch in China and grew to have over 10.5 million customers. By 2021, Black Banx extended its reach to Japan and had increased its customer count to 12 million. By the end of last year, the company had earned as much as $1.1 billion in revenue and a total customer base of over 22 million. Now, while Black Banx´s financial growth has already been very satisfying for its shareholders, the company continues on with its momentum. During the first half of 2023, its revenue grew by 47% to US$997 million, a significant increase compared to US$680m six months prior. According to Black Banx Chief Financial Officer Alexander Johnson, the company is poised to solidify its place as one of the top fintechs in Europe before the end of the year. “Black Banx is well prepared to reach its annual revenue forecast for 2023 of US$1.9bn and has a good chance to improve its profit margin even further.” While the stature of fintech in Europe and fintech remains to be seen, the real winners in the rapid growth of Black Banx and the rest of the industry seems to be customers. As many companies try to jockey for the position which the likes of Black Banx, Revolut, and Bunq hold, customers can only benefit as innovations will continue and new products and services will be created to appeal to their sensibilities, and more importantly to a company like Black Banx, meet all their digital banking needs.