Last week Life.SREDA, the venture arm of Russian finance group Life, announced its investment in mobile bank Rocketbank. The amount of the transaction has not been disclosed, but an unnamed source close to the deal told Russian tech blog Firrma.ru that the fund’s stake in Rocketbank does not exceed 10%.
Life, which is made up of seven commercial banks across Russia, is keen to look at working with new innovative institutions, and the group is examining the possibility of promoting its own products to Rocketbank customers.
Rocketbank launched its mobile retail banking model in 2013. The company eschews offices and expensive offline infrastructures, with the vast majority of its banking processes being carried out online: clients fill out an online form in order to open their account, after which their debit card is delivered to them. The customer then does all of their banking via the Rocketbank smartphone app for iOS and Android.
“According to the fund’s estimations, global investors have put more than $200 million into mobile banking projects over the ten months of 2014,” said Life.SREDA Managing Director Vladislav Solodkiy.
“We believe in the mobile banking business model, and we have a lot of expertise in the sector, since we already have American banking app Moven in our portfolio, as well as Simple, which represents the benchmark for Rocketbank, and which was Life.SREDA’s first exit at the start of this year,” Solodkiy added.
In 2013 Rocketbank secured $2 million from venture fund Runa Capital. The company claims to have processed $37 million worth of transactions, and to be used by tens of thousands of customers. It currently delivers its debit cards to Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.