Bunq forecasts full-year profitability for 2023

After finishing off 2022 with its first full profitable quarter, neobank Bunq is forecasting profitability for the entire 2023.

The fintech’s revenue more than doubled last year from €41.8m to €85.2m, with customer deposits growing by 60 per cent.

Given the bank’s subscription-based model, it is predicting profitability from Q4 2022 will continue to a full year of profitability for 2023.

Founder and CEO Ali Niknam spoke to AltFi about the importance of the neobank reaching profitability and, as the person who funded it, the relief.

“Ultimately it’s the proof point that we truly deliver value to our users, that they are willing to pay a couple of euros a month,” Niknam told AltFi.

“It’s very important because it means that to them too it’s valuable and that they actually entrust us with their money which I’m very grateful for. To do all this work and to be appreciated for it and trusted for it is quite something.”

Bunq’s community spent a huge €90.5bn throughout 2022 and the number of transactions grew by 27 per cent compared to the previous year.

Alongside customer deposits growing (from €1.1bn to €1.78bn), gross user fee income grew by 39 per cent (from €32/7m to €45.4m).

“We live and die by our users and by making them happy and making life easier for them. So for us profitability is not a goal per se, but it is a consequence of us making our users happy,” Niknam continued. 

“What I’m really happy about is that I can see that our growth rates are accelerating even further in the Netherlands and Germany, in France somewhat. Our referral rates, happiness, tenure, all these numbers are up and all of that makes me very happy, so much so that I’m personally more focused on building out Bunq in the US.”

Niknam is now splitting his time between the Netherlands, where Bunq was founded, and the US, as he endeavours to take the neobank stateside.

With a customer base of digital natives, Niknam believes that Bunq has the potential to succeed where others have failed in making the leap from Europe to US as it follows its user base there.

It applied for its US banking licence with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in April, so time will tell if that will be next year's Money 20/20 news for Bunq.