Helvetia Venture Fund backs challenger bank Neon

Zurich-based fintech Neon has raised $7.8 million from pre-existing investors including BackBone Ventures, Helvetia Venture Fund , Innovationsstiftung der SZKB, QoQa, and TX Group. To date, the company has raised ~$18.48 million.

Founded in 2017, Neon offers an app-based banking solution where users can open a bank account and get a free Mastercard with low fees. Neon is also offering car, bike, and household insurance by Smile , the digital insurance arm of Helvetia. The startup now counts 70,000 customers.

“Over the past year, neon has shown that its concept of low-cost, everyday mobile accounts with Swiss deposit insurance has gone down well with the general public, and that it is able to successfully launch innovations like neon green. We are firm believers in neon and want to make a sustainable contribution to its success by expanding our financial support and offering our expertise in marketing and development.” – Samuel Hügli, Head of Technology Services & Ventures at the TX Group.

“We’re delighted that our pre-existing investors are supporting our sustainable growth and future product innovations in this financing round, to ensure we can maintain our dynamism in Switzerland’s retail banking sector!” – Jörg Sandrock, CEO and co-founder of neon.

neon is also letting neon customers make exclusive direct investments in the start-up. Equity crowdinvesting will take place in June, with the aim of getting as many customers interested in investing in neon as possible. “We can sense just how committed our users are to neon, so we’ve reserved an additional 1.5 million CHF for direct investments, after the financing round.” – Yves Collet, neon’s CFO.