Monzo Could Be Sold to Brazil’s Nubank for Up to £10 Billion

by Dee Miller

One of Britain’s most loved digital banks could be heading towards a blockbuster sale.

Monzo is in early talks with Brazilian banking giant Nubank over a potential deal valuing the British fintech at between £8 billion and £10 billion. Monzo has reportedly brought in Morgan Stanley and Qatalyst to advise on the discussions, although there is no guarantee a deal will happen.

Founded in London in 2015, Monzo helped redefine what banking looked and felt like for a generation of British consumers. The bright coral card became a cultural icon, and the company has since grown to more than 16 million customers. Its latest full-year revenue reached £1.7 billion, with adjusted pre-tax profit of £172.6 million.

The potential buyer is on an entirely different scale.

Nubank, founded in Brazil by David Vélez in 2013, has become one of the largest digital financial platforms in the world. It now serves around 139 million customers across Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. Buying Monzo would instantly give it a major foothold in Britain and potentially a platform for wider European expansion.

For Monzo, a sale is not the only option. The bank is also exploring a new investment round that could value it above £8 billion, while private equity group Advent is among firms interested in taking a minority stake. A Nubank takeover would also likely put Monzo’s long-discussed London IPO on hold.

Investors stand to cash out……

A sale could also finally create a major payday for the thousands of everyday investors who backed Monzo through Crowdcube.

Monzo’s first crowdfunding round in 2016 became legendary, raising £1 million in just 96 seconds. Early investors bought shares at around 51p each, with individual investments capped at £1,000.

Crowdcube later told investors that shares purchased in that first round had already increased around 28x in value when Monzo reached its $4.5 billion valuation. Investors from its 2017 rounds were sitting on roughly 14x and 6x gains respectively at the same point.

Monzo was subsequently valued at £4.5 billion during an employee share sale in 2024. The £8 billion to £10 billion valuation now being discussed would represent another 78% to 122% increase from that level.

For someone who put the maximum £1,000 into that first 2016 Crowdcube round, a deal at this level could potentially turn one of Britain's most famous crowdfunding bets into a stake worth tens of thousands of pounds.

The exact return will depend on the final purchase price, dilution, share rights and whether the deal is paid in cash, Nubank shares or a combination of both. But after a decade of holding largely illiquid private shares, a takeover could finally give Monzo's earliest community investors the exit they have been waiting for.

For a company that began as a startup trying to reinvent British banking, a £10 billion exit to one of Latin America’s biggest financial businesses would mark quite the ending to its first chapter.

And potentially the beginning of a much bigger global one.