Deposits at bunq double to €4.5 billion; Online bank launches cashback program

Online bank bunq is continuing to grow at a rapid pace, the company said on Tuesday night. The amount of money in user deposits at the Dutch bank doubled in the past four months, to 4.5 billion euros. The company previously said in March that it achieved growth of 91 percent in user deposits compared to a year earlier. The online bank now wants to attract more Dutch clients with a cashback program and savings account interest rates of up to 3.71 percent. The company will tap the brakes when it comes to international growth.

The number of customers is growing rapidly at bunq . The bank now stands at 9 million users across Europe, a growth of 67 percent over the past twelve months. This makes bunq the second largest “neobank” in Europe, it claimed. The bank itself uses that term for non-traditional new banks, such as those that started in various European countries.

During an event in the DeLaMar Theater in Amsterdam, bunq became the first Dutch bank to give cashback to customers. This means that customers can get back 1 percent of their spending in the hospitality industry and 2 percent of their spending on public transport refunded from their bank. “This is already very popular in the U.S. and our customers are asking for it. This costs us some money, but we think it will also return us enough money,” explained founder and CEO Ali Niknam.

As the bank is “aimed at digital nomads who spend considerable time abroad,” bunq said it was also granting savings account interest for multiple currencies. This includes 3.71 percent interest on U.S. dollar and British pound deposits from regular consumers, and 2.3 percent for business users. “This way, bunq’s location-independent users can grow their savings in whichever currency they prefer.”

In other European countries, bunq no longer needs to grow so fast. In Germany, the bank planned to raise savings rates, but Niknam decided not to do so in order to keep growth in check. “Growing is important and nice, but that is already going so fast, that it doesn’t have to go any faster.”

Last month, NRC revealed the strict work culture that prevails at bunq. According to the newspaper, dozens of employees leave every year because they cannot meet the company’s high standards. They are expected to respond to emails within an hour, even outside working hours, the newspaper wrote as an example.

“If people prefer not to be concerned with results, then there is nothing wrong with that. But then this is not the place for you,” Niknam said about it at the time.

Furthermore, bunq was not yet able to turn a profit over a whole year. The bank, founded in 2012, recorded a net loss of more than 10 million euros over the past year. At the end of last year, however, it did close a quarter with a profit for the first time.