Under the Hood · Behind the Bank

From Issue #002 · 2026-10-22

🧮 Under the Hood: Where a challenger's profit actually comes from

	Nubank (Q2 2026)	Monzo (FY to Mar 2026)
Headline	Gross profit $2.4B	Revenue £1.7B (+39%)
Mix	Credit 41% · Float (earnings on customer deposits) 34% · Fees 25%	Four streams each above £300M: account balances, borrowing, payments, wealth
Customers	139M	15.2M
Growth engine	Primary-bank relationships; deposit costs at 88% of interbank rates	About 79% of new customers came via word of mouth

Sources: Nu Q2 2026; Monzo Annual Report 2026.

Read-across: both have stopped being "card plus app." The float line, the interest earned on customers' deposits, is the underrated one. It pays off only once customers have their salaries paid in, which is why both compete for main-bank status.

From Issue #001 · 2026-10-20

🧮 Under the Hood: Singapore's digital-bank scorecard (FY2025)

Bank	What it's built around	FY2025 income	FY2025 bottom line
GLDB	SME supply-chain finance, no retail customers	S$71.8M	Profit S$16.1M
Trust	Mass-market retail, referrals	S$135M	Loss S$53.5M (first monthly profit Mar '26)
MariBank	Inside the Shopee ecosystem	S$37.4M (+53%)	Loss S$55.6M (widened)
ANEXT	SMEs, flat pricing, remote onboarding	S$42.6M (−5%)	Loss S$49.8M (widened)
GXS	Gig workers and thin-file borrowers	n/a	Biggest loss of the five, but narrowing two years running

Source: Fintech News Singapore, 2026 Singapore Digital Banking Report.

For scale: DBS booked S$13.1B in pre-tax profit for FY2025 (same source). The incumbents haven't left a technology gap for anyone to exploit. So the digital banks that are winning picked a customer the big three underserve, not a better app.