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Founded in 2013, N26 is a fintech company from Berlin, Germany, dedicated to providing personal customers with full-line mobile banking services, including convenient mobile payment, savings credit, international transfers, and travel insurance. By leveraging the power of artificial intelligence and big data, N26 is creating a new digitally intelligent mobile banking experience, better adapting to customers ’financial needs through modern and transparent banking methods, and innovative technical designs that have subverted traditional retail banks and changed The future of banking. N26 is the representative of a new type of digital bank in the 21st century. It has a full European banking license and landed in the US market last year. At present, it has received more than 700 million US dollars in financing and a valuation of 3.5 billion US dollars. bank.

Part 1 company profile

1.1 Entrepreneurship story and development process

Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal, long-time friends, share the same view of German banks. They believed that the German banking industry at that time generally lacked high transparency, digital innovation and personalized services and products. In February 2013, Tayenthal was busy completing a doctorate in law from the University of Vienna, and Stalf was also helping the German startup incubator Rocket Internet to establish various businesses, but they decided to work together to start new business exploration, and the N26 prototype was born. Stalf is the CEO of the company, and Tayenthal becomes the chief financial officer.

Figure: The founding team of N26

The company ’s original name was Papayer (named after papaya, or “Papaya”), and it was designed to sell prepaid cards for the youth. The card is charged one euro per withdrawal, and the parent of the card user can manage the use of the child’s account funds through the application software. The company is supported by the Axel Springer Plug and Play Accelerator organization. After the company was established, it invested 5% of the equity capital, and the remaining equity was held by the two founders on average. The company also received £ 150,000 in investment funds from other institutions to develop the initial version of the mobile app. But unlike the original expectations of the two founders, teenagers did not really integrate into the product. Parents of teenagers are very motivated to use the program. They use the program for budget management and personal remittance.

In the initial stage of the company’s operation, the company did not obtain a banking license, but only cooperated with the card issuer Wirecard Bank to operate as a channel. In January 2015, the company officially launched the product under the name of Number26, and released the Mastercard (Mastercard) for adult customers in cooperation with Wirecard. The card has the characteristics of convenient registration, free account, mobile use, etc., and it has been welcomed by the majority of customers as soon as it is listed. The product first appeared in Germany and Austria, and was promoted to France, Greece, Ireland and other countries in December of the same year. In this year alone, N26 has accumulated 100,000 users.

The founding team soon realized that there were huge business opportunities for the vacancy in the mobile banking market, and they decided to expand their business scope. In July 2016, the company obtained a German banking license and moved the company to Berlin, where it was renamed N26. The name comes from Rubik’s Cube. The cube is very complicated and consists of 26 independent cubes, but as long as you have the correct strategy, it can be solved in a few simple steps. N26 is hoping to use the correct strategy to easily play complex banks system.

In November 2016, N26 ended its cooperation with Wirecard, and all customers moved to its new independent system. In December 2016, N26 announced that its basic current account was opened to 17 euro zone countries. Since the establishment of N26, the number of users has maintained a high growth trend. In February 2019, the company’s number of customers reached 2.5 million, and the number of customers in June increased to 3.5 million. In just four months, it added 1 million customers.

N26 has not stopped its development since it established itself in Europe. It entered the Brazilian market in February 2019 and then landed in the US market in July. As of January 2020, the number of N26 users has exceeded 50