Huge news in the UK and European Fintech scene:  Monzo to acquire Nordic digital bank Lunar 💳🌙🇬🇧 What's happened and what do you need to know? 👇👇👇 According to Bloomberg, Monzo, the UK-based mobile-only bank with 7.5m customers, is holding talks to acquire Lunar, the Nordic bank with 650k customers, as a part of its European expansion. 🤔 Monzo's ambition was always to be much more than a UK-only bank. Their first-ever investment deck read "the first bank for 1 billion people." The hope was digital technologies and open banking might create a new future. 🤔 Is this a smart move? After going through several growing pains, and a stalled US expansion, the temptation might be to consolidate in the UK and expand the product range. But I like the ambition. Monzo was always a brand that tried to do the impossible and did so with panache (great word). 🤔 The Brexit reset. When Brexit happened, several UK-based banks re-examined their ambitions to be pan-European. Revolut, as a non-bank in the UK, could continue to scale across the region, and local competitors began to dominate their regions. 🤔 Is this opportunism? Fintech companies might have great teams, licenses, technology, and products that are struggling for profitability. Despite that, it feels out of character for the bank. Monzo hasn't been acquisitive; they're famously engineering-led and use very few external suppliers, preferring to build in-house. No doubt Lunar would accelerate their Nordic market entry, but perhaps the market timing has helped here too.