The Challengers 14: N26 raises war chest, the rise of digital private banks, & future of Green Dot

On this episode of The Challengers Podcast, Zack Miller and Josh Liggett talk about the extension financing round some of the larger challenger banks are announcing. N26, Revolut and Judo all added to their war chests as they, and their investors, prepare to be going into what Zack called "a nuclear winter". Josh said some of the challenger banks looking to raise mid-2020 are suffering. So, those firms who can raise, should raise. Josh said that Microsoft has had 2 to 3 years of sales happen in the past few months as firms move further into digital. Green Dot is a company in transition. In some sense, it was one of the first challengers and has seen the rest of the market kind of pass it by. New leadership wants to focus more on its banking as a service platform and spend less on marketing its own products. Josh relates the firm's evolution to a lot of what's going on in technology about focusing on the base and jettisoning the side projects. Josh related that New Jersey has a shortage of ventilators, surgical masks, and COBOL developers. He's frustrated on how long it's taking for banks to fully embrace digital. Zack believes that the pandemic is accelerating a process that was already underway. There's still a long way to go. Josh talked about the rise of niche challengers, exemplified by two new European digital private banks looking for their footing, Alpian and 220.