Koho Hits Unicorn Status With $130M Series E, Eyes Bank Licence

Koho Financial closed a $130 million CAD Series E financing that values the Canadian challenger bank at $1.33 billion, lifting it to unicorn status. The all-equity round provides the initial capital base the company needs to become a federally regulated Schedule 1 bank, CEO Daniel Eberhard told BetaKit.

“It’s nice validation,” Eberhard said. “Both the quality of the investors who are coming in and valuation itself [are] a testament to what we’ve done. There’s much more work in front of us than behind us.”

New investors in the round include Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, Baltimore-based Savano Capital, Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke, and Affirm COO Michael Linford. Existing backers – Portage, BDC Capital, the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, Drive Capital, and Eldridge – also participated. Koho did not disclose which investors led the financing. The company also held a “relatively small” secondary sale for employees.

Total funding since inception now stands at $507 million.

The 250-person firm, founded in 2014 in Vancouver with operations in Toronto, generates roughly $250 million CAD in annual revenue and is growing 50% year-over-year, Eberhard said.

Koho is in the “final stages” of obtaining a Schedule 1 banking licence, a process it started five years ago and first disclosed in 2024. Toronto-based FinTech Questrade secured the same licence last year after a six-year effort.

Canada’s banking sector is dominated by six large institutions. Without a licence, Koho’s innovations have been limited to user experience and product design. A bank licence would let the company “innovate at an infrastructure level,” build better deposit and lending products, and lower its cost of capital, Eberhard has said.

David Merriby, former chief compliance officer at Capital One and Amex Bank of Canada, joined Koho in March as chief compliance and risk officer to lead the licensing push. He replaced former chief banking officer Peter Aceto, who left in 2024.

Koho has surpassed 2.5 million clients, up from one million in late 2023. The average customer uses three of the company’s offerings: a prepaid Mastercard, a line of credit, international money transfers, credit history building, tenant insurance, and cryptocurrency. The company has also outlined plans to eventually move into telecom.

Like many FinTech firms, Koho has relied on third-party partnerships with regulated players to deliver those products. A bank licence would let it offer them directly.

“Enormous amounts of Canadians’ wealth are eroded by suboptimal financial setups,” Eberhard said. “It’s very difficult to have agency if you don’t have financial stability.”

Eberhard estimated that building a business capable of changing that “takes a generation.” He thinks Koho has the chance to become Canada’s “next great bank.”

Early Koho investor Joe Canavan told BetaKit he believes Eberhard is building “a generational winner.”

For context on the broader FinTech sector, AlphaScala’s stock market analysis tracks similar disruptors. Koho’s payment-focused model can be compared to firms like Mastercard, which maintains an MA stock page showing how scale and regulatory access shape valuation in financial services.

Eberhard said Koho measures its impact not on valuation but on how many Canadians choose its products. “There’s much more work in front of us than behind us.”