Cryptos, teamwork and boundary-pushing fintech: how Qonto is challenging Europe’s banks

euronews.com:

The French business banking start-up Qonto began with humble beginnings in 2017 with the aim of making banking easier for freelancers and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs).

In five short years, it reached unicorn status with a valuation of $5 billion (€4.4 billion) and has become a European champion.

With offices in France, Italy, Spain, and Germany, the company is growing its presence in Berlin, and on Friday announced a deal to acquire the German fintech giant Penta which is expected to close in the next few weeks.

Qonto’s long-term ambition is to become the finance solution of choice for one million European SMEs and freelancers by 2025.

Euronews Next spoke with Qonto’s co-founder and CEO Alexandre Prot to find out how it plans to lead Europe’s fintech market, the role of cryptocurrencies and the future of challenger banks.

The main issues Prot found with traditional banking were the apps were not easy to use so much so that it was “painful” to request a statement, it was not easy to organise your company’s finances, such as paying employees, and customer support could take days for an answer.

“As any small business owner or founder, we struggled every day with banking and managing our finances as a small business,” he said.

He and his business partner Steve Anavi said they really wanted to build that solution that they “really would have loved to have ourselves in the first place”. So they did, by launching Qonto in France.

The company aims to solve all those problems with better customer service and offers a no strings attached policy so you can cancel your account with a couple of clicks on your computer.

Most importantly, Qonto aims to be transparent in its fees so does not have hidden costs or have a transfer