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Europe’s biggest neobanks – Revolut, N26, Monzo and Starling – promised to make banking better. Here was a fresh, new set of distinctly European tech startups sitting in the wallets of millions of genuine users – the familiar flash of neon colored cards in pubs, cafes and shops had sparked wildfire word-out-mouth marketing across the U.K. in particular. From 2014 onwards, the challenger banks offered something simple, better, entirely online and free of the stodgy lineage of century-old banking brands for whom current account banking had become a largely loveless and loss-making exercise. But the pandemic and the subsequent ‘new normal’ across Europe has pushed neobanks to the edge. With not a penny of profit yet between them, the pandemic was an opportunity for the startups to strengthen their relationship with users, and come out of the lockdown having proved their value over the big banks they sought to disrupt. This simply didn’t happen.
From The Sad Demise Of Europe’s Neobanks:
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