Monzo has secured £85 million in a series E funding round with a valuation of £1billion, propelling the challenger bank into the ranks of the UK’s FinTech ‘unicorns’.

The funding round was led by US investors General Catalysts and Accel, joined by existing backers Passion Capital, Goodwater, Thrive Capital, Orange Digital Ventures and Stripe.

The FinTech startup, launched in 2015, announced last month that it had reached one million customers. The London-based bank said it will use the money to further expand its reach and develop new features for its mobile banking platform.

Earlier this month in an interview with FStech, one of the bank’s lead engineers revealed long term plans to reach 10 million customers as well as expand operations internationally.

It claims to account for 15 per cent of all new bank accounts opened each month in the UK.
The bank is also planning to launch a crowdfunding round later this year, as it seeks to build a community around its digital banking operations.

A previous crowfunding round on Crowdcube saw it raise £1million equity in under two minutes.

The bank’s chief executive Tom Blomfield said: “While we’ve come a long way, we feel we’re still very much at the start of the journey. I’m really excited to be working with two new world-class investors to help bring Monzo to millions more people.”

In April this year, digital challenger bank Revolut became the first UK bank to reach so-called ‘unicorn’ status when it was valued at more than $1billion.

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