Coconut raises £2.5m in Crowdcube campaign

Coconut, the banking platform designed for SMEs and self-employed people, has closed its second crowdfunding round just shy of £2.5m. 

The Crowdcube campaign was initially launched in the hopes of raising £700,000 but the campaign quickly went into overfunding, raising a total of £2.47m, beating its target by 352 per cent, from over 3,000 investors. 

Coconut launched the campaign nearly two and a half months behind schedule because of the coronavirus-related disruption. 

This most recent raise is Coconut’s second crowdfunding effort, the last time the fintech crowdfunded, back in 2018, it beat its target by 400 per cent and raised just under £2m. 

According to the statistics on Crowdcube, the latest funding puts the fintech at a pre-money valuation of £12m. 

Back when the campaign was first launched, Coconut’s CEO Sam O’Connor told AltFi that the fintech was planning to use the funds raised to invest in new products and services as “self-employment will be a major feature of the economic recovery.” 

And as if crowdfunding £2.5m wasn’t enough for the fintech, Coconut also filed a £5m BCR Pool E bid just last week. 

Coconut was the fourth fintech to file a bid for part of Banking Competition Remedies £100m fund, following the likes of Funding Xchange,Starling Bank and Ezbob.

Coconut's bid went in at the end of last month as part of the application window for pots worth £2.5-5m, funding that O'Connor says would be used to further commercialise its accounting service offering.