Berlin-based digital bank N26 is abandoning its US operations to focus on the European market.
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This means that approximately 500,000 customer accounts will be closed and will no longer be available from 11 January 2022.
N26 began its U.S. expansion in July 2019, but a lot has changed around the world since then.
The digital bank has already withdrawn from the UK market after spending around $31 million to enter it, a decision justified by the difficulties associated with Brexit.
“N26's vision is to build the world's favourite bank, and as pioneers in digital banking, we remain committed to this goal,” N26 said in a statement.
“The lessons learned from N26's two years of growth in the U.S. market are being applied continuously as we further expand our product portfolio and scale our global business.”
“In our industry, the synergies in moving from Europe to the US are not as great as with, say, WhatsApp, which can internationalize more easily,” co-founder and co-CEO Max Theyenthal said in an interview with Business Insider USA.
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“We had to build a bank from scratch, with all the different licenses, contracts and payment systems. If you had asked me four years ago, I would have said we would enter a new market every year. But now we know that one market is already complex enough and that this complexity should not be underestimated.”
In October, N26 raised $900 million in a funding round, claiming it was valued at $9 billion.
However, the company experienced difficulties when it was investigated by German regulator BaFin for suspected fraudulent accounts and money laundering after it underestimated the security measures applied when creating accounts.
