Dutch online bank Bunq has made its first quarterly profit in its 10 year history – posting a plus of €2.3 million in the final three months of 2022.

The profit is due to an increase in revenue from subscriptions, which were up 37% on the previous year, the company said.

Bunq was founded in 2012 by Ali Niknam, who told the NRC in a short interview that the bank is now ‘entering a new phase’ and that expansion outside Europe is on the cards.

In July 2021 Bunq raised €193 million in a deal with British private equity firm Pollen Street Capital, valuing the company at approximately €1.6 billion. Pollen now owns 10% of Bunq’s shares, with the rest held by Niknam who had financed the company himself up to that point.

Court

Last October, Bunq had a major breakthrough when it won a long-running court case against the Dutch central bank which had tried to ban it from screening its clients using AI techniques and data analyses.

The central bank had said Bunq was not properly complying with anti money laundering legislation which requires banks to run risk profiles of clients and monitor their transactions accordingly.

The appeal court, however, said that the central bank had not sufficiently proved Bunq’s methodology was not in line with the legislation and rejected the central bank’s claim that Bunq did not have enough information about its business clients.