Brice Boulesteix
23 June 2020
We are now a bona fide bank and have a new name: Memo Bank. Starting this fall, we will be offering a limited number of early access accounts and plan on greatly increasing availability by the end of year.
We are very pleased, truly delighted, to announce to you that:
A few weeks ago, we received two pieces of good news. The Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (ACPR), the body that regulates banks in France, has given us approval to obtain a credit institution license, thus making us a bank. In parallel, the European Central Bank (ECB), which supervises banks at the European level, has also given us the green light, thus recognizing our status as a bank. The discussions we had with the regulators went very smoothly, and we thank them for their trust. We are the first independent bank to emerge in France in 50 years, and we understand the responsibilities that this entails.
As the name suggests, the credit institution license will allow us to offer loans to our customers. In addition to offering financing, we will also provide deposit facilities, such as current accounts, and payment methods, such as IBANs. We want to help business owners manage their payments, receipts, and cash flow, but we also want to support them in financing their projects by offering the expertise of our frontline bankers. We want to be the bank for SMEs, the one for the CAC 140,000 — France had 138,700 SMEs in 2017 according to INSEE.
If you have been following us for some time, you may have known us under the name Margo. We had chosen Margo as a temporary code name while we were working on our licensing application. Since we are now a bank, a new bank, we thought that a new name was necessary; and this new name is Memo Bank.
To accompany this name change, we have also changed our logo. Some see four small cubes in perspective, others see four rockets flying in formation, and the Bretons on our team see a nod to their beloved ermine — but you probably have to be Breton to see it. We mainly see our new logo, and we can’t wait to deploy it everywhere.
The Memo Bank logo
To finance our development, we have just completed a new fundraising round of 20 million euros, from institutional investors and experienced entrepreneurs. We are fortunate to have the support of Bpifrance Investissement, the investment fund BlackFin Capital Partners (created by the founders of Fortuneo), and Daphni, who was already present during the previous fundraising round. Many entrepreneurs also participated in this new round of funding. Memo Bank is a bank for entrepreneurs, but it is also a bank built and financed by entrepreneurs.
From the start of the school year, we will offer business owners:
We are currently testing our services internally, and some features already seem indispensable to us, such as the ability to open an account without sending any mail, an unlimited transaction history, and collaborative account management that allows each person to have their own access and responsibilities. As our website is built with modern technologies, it works equally well on computers, mobile phones, and tablets. Since business owners work everywhere, it makes sense to offer them a website that works everywhere.
The current account is accessible on the web and on mobile.
At this stage, we have a credit institution license, enough capital to lend to our clients, online services that seem stable, and bankers ready to meet our future clients — while maintaining reasonable distances. We still need to connect with several partners and put the finishing touches on our online services.
We hope to be able to welcome a limited number of clients in a preview phase by September, before opening our services more widely by the end of the year. Registrations for our limited access program are open, and we will soon provide more information to interested executives.
To create Memo Bank, we had to build a technical infrastructure from scratch. At the same time, we had to prepare an accreditation application and recruit a team to become a bank capable of granting loans to its clients. We have learned a lot since our early days on the project, back in late 2016, and we hope to be able to tell you more about it in the coming months. For now, we are focusing on welcoming our first customers.
Thank you all for your patience. We have worked hard to create a new independent bank for businesses. We are very pleased to have received the green light from regulators, and we look forward to putting our services in your hands to hear your initial feedback.
Brice Boulesteix
Author
In November 2023, Memo Bank’s Premium banking API was awarded by an external jury of French CFOs (Trophées DAF) in the “Innovation and Transformation” category.
Just four months after this recognition, our Premium API continues to impress financial experts, this time on an international scale, earning Memo Bank the “Best API initiative”. This award was presented by The Digital Banker, a leading provider of information, economic intelligence, and research in the financial services sector.
With this new distinction, Memo Bank positions itself alongside renowned international companies such as HSBC, Santander, and American Express, which are also award recipients, and continues to demonstrate the significant impact of its banking offerings on the financial industry.
Companies that manage their bank accounts collaboratively must find a balance between trust and control, especially when it comes to outgoing bank transfers. Our clients have already made tons of bank transfers—without paying tons of banking fees on them—and today, we’re adding two transfers-related features:
Banking as it should be.
Memo Bank is a limited company (Société Anonyme) with an Executive Board and a Supervisory Board with a capital of €13,084,327.35 and accredited as a credit institution by the European Central Bank and regulated by the French Prudential Supervision and Resolution Authority (4 place de Budapest, 75009 Paris).
Use cases
Do you need to release orders quickly with your suppliers? Fulfill your commitments without tapping into your liquidity too early? At Memo Bank, everything is designed to accelerate your execution speed
Use cases
Do you need to release orders quickly with your suppliers? Fulfill your commitments without tapping into your liquidity too early? At Memo Bank, everything is designed to accelerate your execution speed
