neon raises CHF 7 million and launches equity crowd-investing for its customers

03.06.2021 12:28, Isabelle Mitchell

The Zurich-based fintech neon has received funding of CHF 7 million from its pre-existing investors, safeguarding the start-up’s innovative products and its sustainable growth going forward. With 70,000 customers already on board, neon is launching equity crowd-investing with tokenized non-voting shares (participation certificates) in June so these users can have a hand in its future success. neon was a TOP 100 Swiss Startup in 2020.

neon co-founder and CEO Jörg Sandrock on the TOP 100 stage in 2020

Existing investors safeguard sustainable growth
The Swiss bank challenger neon is continuing its run of success and has completed a financing round, following explosive customer growth in recent months. A wide range of supporters from pre-existing investors as the TX Group, BackBone Ventures, QoQa Services SA, the Helvetia Venture Fund, the Schwyzer Kantonalbank’s innovation foundation, as well as private investors, have invested an additional CHF 7 million in neon.

Samuel Hügli, Head of Technology Services & Ventures at the TX Group, is a firm believer in neon: “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.”

“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!” said Jörg Sandrock, CEO and co-founder of neon.

First neon equity crowd-investing in June
neon is also letting neon customers make exclusive direct investments in the start-up and play a role in its future success. Equity crowd-investing 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 CHF 1.5 million for direct investments after the financing round,” said Yves Collet, neon’s CFO. neon is creating new, tokenized non-voting shares (participation certificates) for the future crowd investors, which will be held in a personal wallet. The Swiss digital asset specialist Sygnum Bank is acting as the tokenization partner.

neon was a TOP 100 Swiss Startup in 2020.