N26 cuts 10 per cent of its New York team

N26 has made nine members of staff redundant after feeling the coronavirus pinch on its purse strings.

Update 15-05-2020 - Article was amended after publication for clarification that the employee departures happened before N26 extended its Series D funding round.

German challenger bank N26 has laid off 10 per cent of its workforce in its New York office to help "future-proof the business in these uncertain times."

The news, first reported in Finance Forward, comes just a week after it was revealed N26 had extended its Series D funding round for a second time and raised an additional $100m, although the redundancies happened a month before the extension was announced.

N26, who first launched in the US back in July 2019, said the funding would be used to invest in its stateside endeavour alongside its current European operations. 

Nine employees were cut in the staff cull, which, according to the spokesperson for the digital bank, was because it "shifted certain functions from our NYC office to our HQ in order to leverage synergies."

The digital bank told Finance Forward the redundancies were primarily employees in recruiting roles.

At the end of April 2020, it was also revealed that N26 founders, Valentin Stalf and Maximilian Tayenthal, would be taking a 25 per cent pay cut for the rest of the year to help keep the bank afloat. 

The founder’s pay cuts were noticeably lower than that of other challenger bank executives. 

Monzo’s Tom Blomfield and Revolut’s Vlad Yatsenko and Nikolay Storonsky have all forgone a salary for the next 12 months to ensure their staff receive theirs, as well as top executives also receiving big pay cuts.  

Earlier on this year, N26 shut up shop in the UK citing Brexit as the reason for its departure in February 2020.