Mobile Banking Startup Lunar Way Discloses €4.2 Million Funding Round

Founded in 2015 and with its mobile app out of beta in November of this year, Danish startup Lunar Way is well on its way to launching a mobile banking application for the “Snapchat Generation” in the Nordic countries. The startup recently disclosed a €4.2 million ($4.5 million) venture capital funding round led by SEED Capital and supplemented by a number of unnamed angel investors.

Lunar Way offers a mobile banking app with a user interface comparable to a social media app, à la Spotify or Snapchat. It allows users to open a bank account, to receive a Mastercard debit card, view a real-time transaction feed to track their spending, apply for loans, enable one-touch account freezing, categorize and sort transactions by brand or retailer, pay bills, and set savings goals — all from their smartphone.

Ken Villum Klausen, CEO of Lunar Way, was quoted as saying: “We want to change the way we bank by re-engineering financial products to fit our mobile lives. We truly believe in playing to your strengths. That’s why we partner up with local incumbents who provide credits and bank know-how. And at the same time, we can develop digital solutions faster than any bank. This partnership model even embraces national subtleties and FSA regulations.”

Rather than secure a banking license, Lunar Way instead partners with local banks in its countries of operation. Available on iOS and Android devices, users can also follow Lunar Way on Snapchat, Instagram and other social media sites, and 85 percent of Lunar Way users follow the company on Snapchat, said TechCrunch. Additionally, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the average Lunar Way mobile banking app user is 24 years old.

Klausen additionally said: “The banking landscape in the Nordics is well-developed, with national identification schemes and integrations to the tax authorities, but all of the incumbents’ products and applications are the same, and there has never been an actual alternative to the traditional banks.”