Monese launches new BaaS platform and strategic partnership with Investec Bank

Source: Monese

Monese, the leading pan-European fintech, today launches a Banking-as-a-Service platform (“BaaS”) and announces a new strategic partnership with Investec Bank plc (“Investec” or “the Bank”).

As part of the strategic partnership, Investec leads the first close of Monese’s ongoing Series C, bringing the total raised by Monese to $162 million. Lyndon Subroyen, Global head of Investec digital and technology, also joins the Monese board.

Investec will adopt Monese’s new BaaS platform, allowing the Bank to accelerate the development of its transactional banking proposition in collaboration with Monese.

The BaaS platform will bolster Investec’s private client transactional banking service and be instrumental in the launch of a new business current account offering for private companies. Over time, Investec also expects BaaS will allow the Bank to consolidate its retail savings products.

Monese and Investec are closely aligned in their commitment to opening up the full extent of digital banking possibilities. The two companies aim to ensure that banks, fintechs and marketplaces can meet the accelerating post-pandemic demand for modern digital financial services amongst consumers.

Monese’s new BaaS platform meets this need. It is cloud based, modular and configurable across multiple jurisdictions, and it is fully integrated with leading financial services partners. BaaS users will have access to everything they need to deliver current account services; from core banking technology to risk engine or mobile app development. Clients will be able to use the platform to build fully bespoke, end-to-end, current account services which can be customised from country-to-country. This makes the Monese platform cost effective and scalable, while simultaneously giving financial service providers the ability to offer a modern digital banking experience to their consumers at speed.

The new BaaS platform is a complement to Monese’s popular European mobile money app, which allows consumers across Europe to access an account quickly in multiple languages and multiple currencies.

In the past year, Monese has also announced a European multi-year strategic partnership with Mastercard and adopted Thought Machine’s cloud native core banking platform, Vault.

Investec’s Private Company Fundraising (PCF) Team are advising Monese on the second close of its Series C. PCF is in dialogue with leading financial institutions and venture capital investors regarding their participation in the round.

Norris Koppel, Founder and CEO of Monese, said: “We’re very excited to launch our BaaS platform and delighted to have such a distinguished partner and investor in Investec, who brings a great deal of experience in delivering exceptional banking services. At Monese we have built a cutting-edge technology platform, one that is tried-and-tested and integrated with some of the best partners in the business. In our experience core banking providers only cover a small part of the products and services that are required to meet the demands of modern digital banking and so our BaaS offering is completely end to end – it’s everything you would need to launch a current account from scratch.

“The pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation significantly. There is a huge appetite amongst traditional and non-traditional companies to reduce the transformation time from years to months or even weeks. With this platform, we believe we can help others take their digital banking offering to a totally new level, get them to market as quickly as possible and get them ahead of consumer demand.”

Lyndon Subroyen, Global head of digital and technology at Investec, said: “We have a longstanding relationship with Monese, having invested in them through Outward VC fund, and smaller investment vehicles in recent years. This strategic partnership will enable us to leverage their scale, expertise, and digital capabilities to deliver Investec’s digital current account offering in the UK. We’re confident that in Monese we’ve found the best partner that will bring enhanced capability for our clients.”

Ruth Leas, CEO of Investec Bank plc, said: “This partnership with Monese will contribute to our growth strategy for the UK Bank as well as bringing accelerated efficiency and enhancements to our private client transactional banking offering and a more holistic banking proposition for our clients in the form of business current accounts. We look forward to building this platform together with Monese.”