Current account provider Ffrees has raised $3.2m as it continues to grow and take on the traditional banks.
The Sheffield-based company provides current accounts that can be entirely managed online. The company guarantees that it doesn’t reject any customers and provides everyone with a debit card for their account.
The investment comes from a number of investors including Finance Yorkshire, Nesta, and the Technology and Innovation Fund.
Be bank Ffree
Founded in 2012, Ffrees offers an alternative option to the banks for anyone who wants a current account.
The service is open to everyone as it doesn’t require a credit check. There’s also no overdraft so no customer ever ends up with debt.
Ffrees offers four different accounts, depending on the needs of the customer. The charges for each account varies from free to £10 per month.
The company is just one of a number of British fintech companies providing an alternative to banks and other financial institutions.
Online only
Founder Alex Letts believes online-only banks are rapidly becoming the norm:
[Customers] want to access their money at will from connected devices whenever and wherever. And they want to pay a fair price transparently to a trusted provider.
That is the model that we at Ffrees are building and this new investment helps to accelerate the rapid progress already being made.
Ffrees currently has 35,000 customers and hopes to grow to one million in the next five years.
The investment will be used to roll out a mobile app and improve its current online offering.
Northern tech growing
Ffrees, based in Sheffield, is a prime example of the type of company that TechNorth hopes to promote.
The investment comes the day after Nick Clegg launches the new initiative which aims to bring in foreign direct investment to the tech clusters around Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Newcastle, Sunderland and the Tees Valley.
At the launch, Clegg emphasised that the new project was in response to the “clear need for us to seize an opportunity to capitalise on existing tech talent by creating a northern tech hub”.