(Bloomberg) -- N26 GmbH is considering a fresh fundraising round next year, people familiar with the matter said, as the German mobile bank eyes a valuation above $3.5 billion.
The Berlin-based startup has been in contact with potential advisers for the fundraising, though discussions are at an early stage and no final decisions have been made, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The funding round could be the company's final one before it considers an initial public offering as early as 2022, one of the people said.
A spokeswoman for the company said there “are not yet any concrete plans for another funding round at this present moment” nor are there currently any “plans or timelines for an IPO in the near future.”
Read more: Startup N26 Raises $100 Million to Grow Markets in Lockdown
Chief Financial Officer Maximilian Tayenthal said in May, after the company's last fundraising round valued N26 at $3.5 billion, that he'd look for a higher valuation next time. The company had attracted more than $100 million from existing investors in an extension to its previous round of $470 million from investors including Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte and Insight Partners.
To date, N26 has collected close to $800 million from investors, making it one of Europe's highest valued non-listed fintech firms.
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Still, N26's expansion has had mixed success. In January, the company said it had gained 250,000 customers in its first five months in the U.S. market, helping boost its global customer numbers to more than 5 million. But a month later, it said it would end its operations in the U.K., blaming the country's exit from the European Union.
The fintech industry was Europe's largest equity investment category having received more than 30 billion euros ($35.4 billion) of venture capital investment since 2014, according to data from analytics firm Dealroom. Investment into the sector in the first half of this year is below 2019 levels, but still higher than 2018 in almost all European hubs, according to the data.
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