A sign hangs from a branch of Banco Santander in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010.
Simon Dawson | Bloomberg via Getty Images
LONDON — Mambu is the latest financial technology company to achieve the coveted status of “unicorn.”
Headquartered in Berlin, Mambu sells software to banks both big and small to help them develop their own digital banking platforms. The company’s clients include the likes of Santander and ABN Amro, as well as fintech firms N26 and OakNorth.
On Thursday, Mambu said its valuation had risen to 1.7 billion euros ($2.1 billion) in a 110 million euro ($135 million) funding round. The new round was led by TCV, an investor in Facebook and Netflix, with additional investment coming from Tiger Global and Arena Holdings.
Mambu is one of several start-ups looking to assist — rather than disrupt — banks in their journey towards embracing modern cloud infrastructure and transitioning away from so-called “legacy” technology.
It competes with the likes of Britain’s Thought Machine, which was founded by ex-Google engineer Paul Taylor, and 10x Future Technologies, the fintech venture of former Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins.
Mambu plans to use the fresh cash to fuel growth — the firm claims its sales doubled last year — and expand its geographic footprint, with a focus on countries like Brazil, Japan and the U.S. The company said it will also double its headcount to 1,000 from the nearly 500 staff it currently employs.
“When Mambu launched in 2011, we knew the future of banking would have to be built on agile and flexible technology,” Eugene Danilkis, Mambu’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “Nearly a decade later, this is more true now than ever, particularly given developments over the past year.”
Danilkis added: “This latest funding round allows us to accelerate our mission to make banking better for a billion people around the world and address one of the largest, most complex global market opportunities that’s still in the infancy of cloud.”
The news comes at a time when digital banking adoption has been accelerated while cash usage is falling due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Mastercard research, 42% of Europeans handle their finances digitally more frequently than they did before the pandemic, while 62% are thinking of switching from physical banking to digital platforms altogether.
Meanwhile, Accenture predicted that the use of cash could fall as much as 28% in Britain and up to 11% across Europe, amid elevated health concerns around Covid and lockdown measures.
