Nordic Challenger Bank Lunar Way Raises €13 Million

FACTS

• Lunar Way –banking app mostly aiming for Millennials– just raised €13 million.

• This funding round led by SEED Capital, involved Greyhound Capital, Socii Capital and other individual investors.
• Goal: Boost their mobile app, especially outside of Denmark, and attract more customers in Northern European countries.
• Lunar Way features:
  • A current account
  • Money transfers
  • Bill payments
  • Credit lines
  • A PFM tool (merchants’ lists, savings goals, spending graphs, etc.)
• The Danish fintech Lunar Way entered the Swedish market in 2018 and will be aiming for Norway by the end of 2019.
• A short while ago they were also granted a PISP licence (Payment Initiation Service Providers). They should soon initiate payments on behalf of their users and expand their set of offers for young customers.

CHALLENGES

• Dealing with competition. This start-up is in favour of addressing the monopoly on clearing services and money transfers. The largest Nordic banks are also planning to launch a new payment infrastructure in 2019.
• Attracting Millennials. Lunar Way aims for a demanding customer segment when it comes to transparency and interest in new technologies, and relies on a digital approach for the sake of customer satisfaction. They claim more than 10,000 new users each month on a 27 million people market.
• Interfacing banks and customers. As an AISP (aggregation service) and PISP (initiation), Lunar Way may challenge existing banking offers and act as a one-stop interface for all payment transactions. They became one of the first players in Europe materialising PSD2-derived opportunities with these two statuses. On the French market, iBanFirst has also been granted these approvals.

MISE EN PERSPECTIVE

• In addition to traditional banking competition, Lunar Way will have to face other challenger banks. Revolut, for instance, also aims for Nordic countries. The British FinTech landed in Sweden in February 2018 and further targets Scandinavian customers with an extensive range of financial services.