Dozens pivots to B2B with closure of consumer accounts

Later this month fintech Dozens is closing its consumer accounts and shutting down its app as part of a substantial pivot to the company’s business model.

The fintech first wrote to its customers back in June notifying them that their accounts would be closed on 31 August, and in a blog post explained that it is shifting to focus on B2B.

“Project Imagine [Dozens’ parent company] is continuing, but simply changing track to B2B for the time being, to give the long term mission the best chance of success,” Dozens wrote.

Explaining the decision Dozens pointed to Covid, remote working and Wirecard’s collapse among factors that have meant “the world has changed significantly from the one we launched into in 2019 and the business needs to adapt accordingly”.

While the details of what this B2B focus would look like were not explicitly revealed, Dozens has a sister company called Pi1 which is building a cloud-based core banking platform.

In earlier blog posts Pi1 was described as “the reason Dozens will never need to seek profit from debt and the reason Project Imagine is aiming for profitability in the near term.”

Not that any of this will be much consolation for Dozens’ 60,000 existing customers, of course, many of whom rely on the banking challenger for their current account and as an investment app with access to BlackRock and Vanguard multi-asset funds.

Dozens started back in 2019 and immediately drew attention with its “Trust Bond” which was heavily advertised in London and promised to pay investors 5 per cent interest as a risk-free investment.

The company went on to raise £3.8m via crowdfunding investors on Seedrs that same year, and would later go on to raise £28m from “from our institutional sponsors in Hong Kong” according to the company.

This fundraising is part of the reason for Dozens changing course, explaining that reducing the high operational costs of running a consumer-facing offering will extend its runway and enable a transition to B2B.

Dozens has published a step-by-step guide to help customers close down their accounts.