Estate is an invite-only website that has helped hundreds of attackers make thousands of phone calls aimed at stealing account passcodes, according to its leaked database.
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Monzo has raised another £150 million ($190 million), as the challenger bank looks to expand its presence internationally — particularly in the U.S.
The new round comes just two months after Monzo raised £340 million ($425 million), meaning the London-based company has now raised north of $610 million in 2024, and $1.5 billion since its inception nine years ago.
The first tranche of the Series I round saw Alphabet’s CapitalG and Google’s GV make a rare co-investment, alongside notable backers including HongShan Capital (formerly Sequoia Capital China), Passion Capital and Tencent. This extension saw existing investors such as CapitalG throwing more cash into the pot, alongside new backer Hedosophia, which had previously backed Monzo rival, Wise.
In March, Monzo said its pre-money valuation was £3.6 billion ($4.6 billion), translating to a post-money valuation of £4 billion ($5 billion). Now, the company says its post-money figure is £4.1 billion ($5.2 billion), meaning not much has changed in the past two months.
While Monzo is mostly known in its domestic U.K. market, it has been trying to crack the U.S. for some years. But without a banking license of its own, it has been operating as a mobile banking app in partnership with Ohio’s Sutton Bank since early 2022. The company appointed a new CEO for its U.S. operations back in October, hiring head of global product for Block’s Cash App, Conor Walsh, to lead Stateside.
In the U.K., Monzo now claims more than 9 million retail customers and 400,000 clients in the business realm. Its revenues doubled in the most recent financial year, and with a veritable war-chest at its disposal, the company is well-financed to try and emulate some of this success across the pond.
“The huge interest we see from global investors is testament to the momentum and strength of our business model and the commitment of our teams, who put our customers at the heart of everything we do,” Monzo CEO, TS Anil, said in a statement issued to TechCrunch. “With even more rocketfuel for our ambitions and exciting products in the pipeline, there’s no doubt in my mind that the best of Monzo is yet to come.”
ICICI Bank, one of India’s top private banks, exposed the sensitive data of thousands of new credit cards to customers who were not their intended recipients.
The Mumbai-based bank confirmed to TechCrunch Thursday that its digital channels “erroneously mapped” about 17,000 credit cards issued in the past few days to “wrong” users. The issue came to light after some customers raised concerns on social media about the bank’s iMobile Pay app exposing unknown customers’ credit card details, including their full number and card verification value (CVV).
“Our customers are our utmost priority, and we are wholeheartedly dedicated to safe guarding their interests,” said Kausik Datta, corporate communications head at ICICI Bank, said in a statement emailed to TechCrunch. “We regret the inconvenience caused. No instance of misuse of a card from this set has been reported to us. However, we assure that the Bank will appropriately compensate a customer in case of any financial loss.”
The spokesperson added that the number of impacted credit cards constituted about 0.1% of the bank’s credit card portfolio.
As reported by the finance-related forum Technofino, sensitive data such as the full card number, expiry date and CVV of unknown customers’ credit cards suddenly appeared for some users on the iMobile Pay app.
“I have access to someone else’s Amazon Pay CC due to a security glitch on the iMobile app. Although OTP restricts domestic transactions, but I can do international transactions using the details from the iMobile app,” one of the users wrote on the forum.
The bank spokesperson told TechCrunch it blocked the affected cards and is issuing new cards to customers.
ICICI Bank, which has over 6,000 branches in India, is in 17 countries worldwide. The iMobile Pay app, launched in 2008, has over 28 million users.
India’s central bank on Wednesday ordered Kotak Mahindra Bank to immediately cease onboarding new customers through its online and mobile banking channels, and to stop issuing fresh credit cards, citing serious deficiencies in the bank’s IT systems and risk management practices.
Kotak Mahindra Bank is one of the largest private banks in India. It’s also one of the key partners for many fintech startups in India, including KredX and Rupeek. The lender, also an investor in many startups, additionally works with many fintech firms to extend credit to SMEs and MSMEs as well as to issue co-branded credit cards.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it was imposing the restrictions on Kotak Mahindra Bank because of significant concerns stemming from its IT examinations of the bank for the years 2022 and 2023. The central bank found serious deficiencies and non-compliance in areas such as IT inventory management, patch and change management, user access management, vendor risk management, data security, and business continuity planning, it said.
Despite being under close scrutiny and engaging in high-level discussions with the RBI over the past two years, Kotak Mahindra Bank failed to adequately address these issues and implement satisfactory corrective measures, the central bank said. The bank’s core banking system and digital channels have experienced frequent and significant outages, with the most recent disruption occurring on April 15, 2024, causing severe inconvenience to customers, the RBI added.
The RBI stated that the rapid growth of digital transactions at the bank, including credit card transactions, has put additional strain on the lender’s already weak IT systems. Without a robust IT infrastructure and risk management framework, prolonged outages could seriously impact the bank’s ability to provide efficient customer service, and potentially harm the broader digital banking and payment ecosystem, the central bank cautioned.
The restrictions imposed on Kotak Mahindra Bank will be reviewed upon completion of a comprehensive external audit, commissioned by the bank with prior RBI approval, and the satisfactory remediation of all identified deficiencies, the RBI said.
This is a developing story. More to follow.
For years, banks have been financing large renewable power projects, from utility-scale solar farms to horizon-spanning wind farms. But smaller projects, like installing a heat pump in someone’s home or retrofitting affordable housing, often get passed over. They simply haven’t been lucrative enough.
But the demand is there, which is why advocates have been clamoring for the federal government to support a so-called green bank, which will underwrite these sorts of projects.
That green bank is now a reality. On Thursday, the EPA announced that it had awarded $20 billion in grants from the Inflation Reduction Act to eight organizations that will use the money to make loans that will help with those projects.
“It’s a chance to prove that this works and creates real benefit on the ground for people across America,” Dawn Lippert, founder and CEO of Elemental Excelerator, told TechCrunch, adding that “tribal communities, rural communities, low income and disadvantaged communities are really the focus here.”
Indeed, over $14 billion of the funding will go toward communities that fit those descriptions, the EPA said.
What’s more, since the money is to be used for loans, it can be recycled once those loans are paid off. Green bank loans have a pretty good track record, too. The Connecticut Green Bank, for example, has a delinquency rate that’s on par with other commercial lenders across both residential and commercial portfolios.
In addition to providing financing for energy upgrades, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, as it is known, is hoping to attract $7 in private capital for every dollar it disperses. In fact, that might be a conservative figure: McKinsey expects the new green bank should attract more than $12 of private investment per dollar on its balance sheet.
The U.S. is expected to need $27 trillion by 2050 to hit net-zero carbon emissions, McKinsey estimates, which might make the green bank’s $20 billion seem small. But its ability to spur private investment and the fact that it’s not a one-time grant should allow it to have an impact that extends beyond its initial bottom line.
Founders and investors should see some benefit, too. Though the money is aimed mostly at consumers and small businesses, equity investments are a possibility, Lippert said. Plus, the funding should juice demand for technologies that have been proven and are ready for commercial deployment.
For those that aren’t yet, the green bank’s loans should have a cascading effect, sending a signal upstream to founders and investors that there are markets for consumer-level climate tech that works for low-income and disadvantaged communities.
“This $20 billion of funding is going to have a really significant impact on creating jobs, reducing costs for American families, creating a healthier, safer future for our children,” Lippert said.
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