Yahoo Finance Savings app Chip closes record breaking £12m crowdfund
Digital savings app Chip has closed a bumper fundraising round of £11.5m ($16m, in a crowdfund of 12,954 investors.
The round comes in at the biggest equity crowdfund of the year so far, as well as the biggest equity crowdfund held on Crowdcube of all time. A large portion of the fundraise came from the fintech's customer base.
As part of the round, Chip raised £1m in under 10 minutes and hit £8.6+m in under 48 hours.
"This is a huge validation of the strong position Chip is in, and our ambitions to build the next fintech unicorn," says founder and CEO Simon Rabin.
Off the back of the crowdfund, the company added 6,500 new investors, growing its shareholder community to over 23,000.
The savings app has taken a community-based approach to its growth over the past year, as those that use the app vote on changes and products they would like to see. Rabin says the company sees big banks as its competitors, as a low interest rate environment puts pressure on people's pockets. Rabin wants to build a global challenger bank to capitalise on the huge untapped potential of people's savings.
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Chip currently offers banking services through a partnership with Clearbank and is the only non-bank that offers FSCS accounts.
“From a product perspective, we’re looking at more market-leading savings accounts, more investment funds, and more automatic investing," says Rabin. "We also have aggressive growth plans, across several marketing channels, as we aim to increase our user base further.”
Rabin also says that the next savings offerings could include cryptocurrency products, as interest in decentralised finance grows.
Chip’s largest ever raise follows on from a year of aggressive growth that saw the company increase revenues 500% and create profitable unit economics.
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The fintech’s user base grew by more than 60% to over 400,000 while the total amount of saves processed swelled to over £640m.
The company will use the capital to fuel growth activities across marketing, product and technology. Chip is also looking to significantly increase the size of the team as it eyes European expansion — although the company has not disclosed which specific regions it will target first.
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