Nickel, the neobank of the BNP Paribas group, is fueling the fintech war for customers in Spain. The company has reached 100,000 users in Spain since its launch in 2021 and aims to grow this number sixfold, reaching 600,000 accounts opened by 2025.
Nickel is a company with a very special business model. Neobank offers a very simple offering with basic financial services: a bank account and an associated debit card to receive income, make payments and withdraw cash. The peculiarity is that there are physical points such as an office where customers can open the account and withdraw money.
Specifically, these are local establishments, especially tobacco shops and lottery sales points, which offer great capillarity, especially in rural areas where the smaller municipalities of the so-called “empty Spain” do not have offices or ATMs. Banking transactions. Nickel already has a network of 1,700 affiliated branches in Spain and, contrary to the continuous closure of branches, the company plans to increase the number to 2,500 by 2025. According to the neobank, with this number of connected branches, it has become a network of 1,700 connected branches, becoming the fourth entity with the most physical points.
“Many customers have opened their Nickel accounts to regain access to cash close to home, which many lost following branch closures. This is particularly relevant in empty Spain: in a growing number of Spanish municipalities, we have noticed that only Nickel customers have the ability to withdraw or deposit cash from their accounts without having to travel several kilometers,” explains the company.
To benefit from the services, Nickel does not require any conditions or requirements or connection to customers, although there is a fee of 20 euros per year for maintenance. In addition, customers have access to an app with which they can view and manage their account. There is also telephone customer service. According to the company, Nickel has been a profitable company since 2018, which is an exception in the neobank sector, which is usually in a growth phase and therefore needs to invest more money than it generates in order to consolidate its business model.
“The entire team is proud to see in this symbolic figure that in the first half of 2023 we have achieved the result of two years of effort to launch in Spain from scratch such a groundbreaking and unique proposal Nickel. One hundred thousand accounts are one hundred thousand people and more than 1,700 points that trust Nickel and that we work for every day. This figure clearly shows that we are meeting a real need in Spain and are on the right track,” says Mónica Correia, CEO of Nickel in Spain.
Nickel began operations in France in 2014 and has been part of the BNP Paribas banking group since 2017. It has been present in Spain since 2021 and has subsequently ventured into Portugal, Belgium and Germany. The company has 3.5 million worldwide.
