Kroo
“Can a socially-branded UK challenger bank scale profitably by moving from BaaS rails onto its own PRA charter and lending book?”
Founded2016
HQLondon, United Kingdom
Total raised£75M+ (pre-Series C)
Latest roundSeries C (targeted, 2023)
IndustryFintech / Neobank
The story
Founded 2016 as B-Social — a social finance app centred on bill-splitting with a prepaid Mastercard debit card issued via PayrNet/Modulr. Rebranded to Kroo in 2020 and pursued a full UK banking licence, granted in June 2022. Since then Kroo has migrated from the third-party e-money rails onto its own PRA-regulated balance sheet, launched current accounts, overdrafts and personal loans, and moved into bridging-loan forward flow deals — evolving from a prepaid neobank wrapper into a full-stack chartered UK challenger bank.
Product timeline
2016
Founded as B-Social, a social finance app with prepaid debit card· pivot
2020
Rebranded from B-Social to Kroo; raised £7.8M seed· pivot
2021
Raised £17.7M Series A; received 'authorised with restrictions' UK banking licence· banking
2022
Received full UK banking licence (June); launched current accounts (December)· banking
2023
Launched personal loans and overdrafts; pursued £55–70M Series C round· lending
2026
Second bridging-loan forward flow deal for balance-sheet lending exposure· lending
Regulated entities
1
regulatory licence held by Kroo
Licence types, jurisdictions and registered entities are in the Embedded Finance Index report.
The stack
5 layers disclosed in Kroo’s embedded-finance stack
Money movement
Banking / BaaS
in the full report
Card issuing
in the full report
Card network
in the full report
Lending
in the full report
Accounting gap: none
5 more providers across 4 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.