Founded in 2012 by serial entrepreneur Ali Niknam, bunq has brought lasting change to the European banking industry. By having its users at the heart of the business and building a product rooted in their wants and needs, bunq quickly scaled to become the second largest neobank in the EU. Serving digital nomads across the European Economic Area, bunq makes life easy for location-independent people and businesses starting from the way they manage money: how they spend, save, budget and invest.

Pioneering many things considered impossible, bunq was the first bank to get a European banking permit in over 35 years, raised the largest series A round ever secured by a European fintech (€193 million), and was the first EU neobank to achieve structural profitability at the end of 2022. On its mission to build the first global neobank for digital nomads, in April 2023, bunq announced its bid to enter the US market by applying for a banking license.

Our People

Ali, Founder & CEO

Ali Niknam (1981), born in Canada but from Iranian descent, grew out to be the de-facto innovator in the financial sector, bringing diversity to the banking industry. He set up his first company when he was just 16 years old. In his early twenties he founded TransIP, the third largest domain name and web hosting provider in the world. In 2012 he set out to radically change the banking industry and founded bunq.

Ali managed to get the first European banking permit in over 35 years and, as its sole investor, invested around €150M in bunq. In a deal with British private equity firm Pollen Street Capital, bunq has raised €193 million and the company’s valuation soared to €1.6 billion, as of July 2021. As part of the deal, bunq acquired Capitalflow Group, a privately held Irish lending company with strong ties to the Irish community. In 2022, bunq acquired Belgian fintech TriCount, a move that made bunq the second largest neobank in Europe.

Bianca Zwart, Chief Strategy Officer at bunq

As Chief Strategy Officer at bunq, Bianca drives the company’s user-centric mission forward. By deeply understanding the wants and needs of bunq’s users, Bianca shapes the company’s long-term strategy and removes roadblocks on bunq’s path to becoming the world’s first global bank for digital nomads. In this role, Bianca is in charge of bunq’s PR and communications teams that shape bunq’s public image and spread the word about bunq’s story with millions of bunq’s current and potential users. Moreover, as the company’s chief strategist, Bianca steers the team at the heart of everything bunq does: user operations.

After joining bunq as a frontline support guide in 2016, Bianca’s return to operations is a full circle. Having quickly grown to team leader in user support and Head of PR & Communications, Bianca left bunq to pursue her own entrepreneurial ventures. In 2018-2021, Bianca founded and scaled Black & White Communications, a PR agency working with fast-growing European companies and their inspiring founders, and Pioneer Academy, an educational, subscription-based platform that enables early-stage startup founders to build their own in-house PR-machine. After a successful exit, Bianca rejoined bunq as the company’s first Chief of Staff in 2022 where, involved in all facets of the business, she served as the co-pilot to bunq’s founder and CEO, Ali Niknam, and focused on removing operational obstacles that stood in the way of bunq’s mission.

A digital nomad, Bianca lives an international lifestyle, experiencing firsthand the challenges and opportunities faced by bunq’s location-independent users around the world. This unique perspective helps her keep the company’s focus on what matters most: bunq’s users.

Samantha de Groen, Product Marketing Lead at bunq

Raised in Miami and having earned higher education degrees from institutions in the US and the Netherlands, Samantha de Groen is taking care of delivering products that make life easy and showing the world how they respond to users’ wants and needs.

Throughout her time at bunq, Samantha built the company’s CRM Marketing and Product Marketing tools from the ground up and launched bunq’s Easy Green, the neobank’s flagship subscription plan that empowers users to offset their carbon footprint just by using bunq.

Passionate about bunq’s users, Samantha works closely with Data & Research, Product Development, and multiple marketing teams to tell bunq’s story across different channels. She also sees to it bunq’s product is tailored to the needs of its users across different markets. To that end, Samantha is responsible for validating and testing the neobank’s product offerings and messaging in new markets in support of bunq’s ambitious international expansion strategy.

Brian Spaans, Head of Finance at bunq

As Head of Finance, Brian balances bunq’s profitability with user happiness while he oversees accounting, FP&A, Regulatory Reporting and Treasury functions at bunq.

Throughout his time at bunq, Brian assembled a highly-skilled Finance and Treasury team that contributed to the neobank’s sustainable growth and execution of bunq’s ambitious M&A strategy. Moreover, Brian pioneered bunq’s world-class annual ESG report and helped bunq gain 10% of the insured mortgages market in the Netherlands in just 6 months since launch of bunq’s Easy Mortgages.

Thijs de Maa, Engineering Lead – Special Projects at bunq

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Thijs taught himself coding at the age of 10, simply to start building websites. In 2018, Thijs joined bunq as a backend engineer, kickstarting his contributions to the future of the fintech sector. At bunq, Thijs built and developed one of the best Frontend and QA teams in European fintech, able to ship groundbreaking features in record time. Now, he’s focused on bringing bunq’s most ambitious projects to life, such as launching promotions or fully integrating new payment methods at breakneck speed.

Ali el Hassouni, Head of Data and AI at bunq

Ali enables the company to implement data-driven solutions and make sure bunq, as a tech company, stays on top of the latest trends in technology. One big focus of Ali is making all of bunq’s processes better with the help of AI & ML. As such, he’s been working on our transaction monitoring system that’s proven to be 2.5 times more effective in detecting fraud than other means used by the majority of banks and financial institutions. He’s now working to implement AI in a multitude of functions at bunq, such as user support, marketing, or app testing.