PayPal and Monese in ‘seamless’ accounts venture

Digital bank Monese and US payments giant PayPal have launched a joint service that allows customers to “seamlessly” manage their accounts.

Customers at the London-based bank, which operates across 31 European countries, will be able to add their Monese card to a PayPal digital wallet, allowing them to buy and sell to any of the payments firm’s 277 million consumers and merchants around the world.

Monese customers will also be able to manage their PayPal balances in the digital bank’s mobile app, meaning Monese customers can manage money in their PayPal account, alongside their other finances.

Monese said these new features are now available to Monese UK personal account holders, and will be added to other European personal accounts, and the bank’s business customers over “the coming months”.

‘We work with innovators’

Monese, which operates in 12 languages and has over one million customers, was founded in 2013 by Estonian entrepreneur Norris Koppel (pictured).

Koppel said: “We serve a fast-growing and incredibly international audience who travel the world for study, work, family, or retirement, and are avid PayPal users. Through our partnership with PayPal, our customers will have greater choice and more access to doing business around the world.”

PayPal vice president of global markets and partnerships Jennifer Marriner added: “We work with innovators like Monese, so people outside the traditional financial system can use our tools to thrive in the global economy.”

Monese has built a relationship with PayPal that saw the payments service lead a $60m Series B fundraise for the digital bank in September 2018.

In May, PayPal said its Working Capital lending unit has now lent over $10bn to 225,000 small businesses in the US, UK, Australia, Germany, and Mexico since 2013, as the US firm continues its expansion into new financial service areas.