Trade Republic: Europe's Retail-Investing Decacorn and Germany's €12.5 Billion Neobroker-Bank

What is this about?

Trade Republic is the Berlin broker-bank that made investing from a phone mainstream in Europe. This edition of the Unicorn Atlas profiles the company behind the app: what it does, how it makes money, its full funding path to decacorn status, and the regulatory shifts shaping it.

Keywords: Trade Republic, neobroker, fintech, Berlin, ETF savings plans, ECB banking licence, payment for order flow, decacorn, DACH unicorns.

A new edition of the Unicorn Atlas by Startuprad.io — a continuously updated intelligence platform on Europe's billion-dollar companies, anchored in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Created: 6 August 2026 · Last updated: 6 August 2026 · Last verified: 6 August 2026 · Unicorn status: 🟢 Active Unicorn (Decacorn) · Valuation confidence: 🟢 A — €12.5B / ~$14.7B (Dec 2025).

Trade Republic is one answer to a question Startuprad.io covers every week — why so few European startups reach global scale. If you are building or selling across Europe, partner with Startuprad.io, and explore our B2B case studies and Grow in Europe handbook.

In short

Trade Republic is a Berlin-headquartered online broker and bank. In December 2025 it reached a €12.5B valuation (about $14.7B) through a €1.2B secondary share sale, confirming decacorn status — more than double its ~$5.3B mark from May 2021. As of mid-2025 it reported 8 million users across 17 countries and €100B in customer assets, run on a full European Central Bank banking licence held since December 2023.

Key facts at a glance

Field	Detail
Legal name	Trade Republic Bank GmbH
Founded	2015, Munich (as "Neon Trading"); HQ Berlin
Founders	Christian Hecker (philosopher), Thomas Pischke (physicist), Marco Cancellieri (computer scientist)
Sector	Fintech / neobroker + bank
Products	Stocks, ETFs, bonds, derivatives, crypto; ETF savings plans; interest account; debit card
Scale	8M users, 17 countries, €100B AUM (mid-2025)
Banking licence	Full ECB banking licence (Dec 2023)
Unicorn since	May 2021 ($5.3B, Series C)
Latest valuation	€12.5B / ~$14.7B (Dec 2025, secondary)
2023/24 financials	€340M revenue (€316M commission); €34.8M profit
Lead investors	Founders Fund, Sequoia, Accel, TCV, Thrive, Ontario Teachers'; new 2025: Fidelity, Wellington, GIC

What Trade Republic actually does

Trade Republic runs a mobile app that lets retail customers buy and sell securities — stocks, ETFs, bonds, derivatives and crypto — and hold savings and a bank account in the same place. Its signature product is low-cost, app-first investing: near-flat-fee trades, fractional shares, and automated ETF savings plans aimed at first-time and mass-market investors.

Since December 2023 it has operated under a full banking licence from the European Central Bank, letting it hold customer deposits directly, offer current accounts with individual IBANs, pay interest on uninvested cash (from January 2023), and issue a debit card (2024) — rather than relying on a partner bank. It operates across 17 countries and in September 2025 launched in Poland, its first market outside the eurozone.

In plain terms: Trade Republic sells brokerage and banking services to retail consumers — a distribution and infrastructure business for retail investing, not a technology moonshot.

How Trade Republic makes money

Revenue comes from three main streams:

• Trading commissions — a flat €1 fee per single security order (2025); savings-plan executions are free.

• Interest income on customer deposits — material and rate-sensitive given a full banking licence and ~€100B in assets.

• Payment for order flow (PFOF) rebates — historically paid by execution venues. PFOF was about 33% of revenue in 2023, cut to under 30% by January 2026. Because the EU bans PFOF (Germany's exemption expires 30 June 2026), Trade Republic obtained a BaFin multilateral trading facility (MTF) licence in January 2026 to internalise equity execution and protect that economics.

For fiscal 2023/24 the company reported roughly €340M in revenue (about €316M of it commission income) and €34.8M in profit — early evidence the model works at scale.

The funding story

• 2017 — Düsseldorf-based Sino AG took a majority stake in the young company.

• 2019–2020 — Series B of €60M+ from Creandum, Project A Ventures, Accel and Founders Fund.

• May 2021 — Series C of $900M at a $5.3B valuation (May 2021), making it Germany's most valuable startup at the time.

• June 2022 — €250M Series C extension led by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, holding the ~€5B valuation (Jun 2022).

• December 2025 — €1.2B secondary share sale at €12.5B / ~$14.7B (Dec 2025); existing backers Founders Fund, Sequoia, Accel, TCV and Thrive, with new investors reported (Fidelity, Wellington and GIC per Finance Magnates; Khosla per Tech.eu). No new primary capital was raised.

Christian Hecker, co-founder and CEO, on the December 2025 deal: "This transaction underlines that the cultural shift to retail investing in Europe is only starting."

The GameStop moment and consumer-protection scrutiny

Trade Republic's growth has not been frictionless. During the January 2021 GameStop episode it restricted trading in certain meme stocks, drawing 4,000+ complaints to regulator BaFin. Consumer bodies have since challenged some practices: a 2022 Verbraucherzentrale action over a "free share" promotion, and a February 2025 suit over advertising of its cash interest rate and deposit-protection scope. Complaints to the German consumer federation rose about 75% year-on-year to roughly 350 by October 2025, alongside 2025 platform outages and dividend/tax-processing errors. These are operational and conduct issues — not solvency or unicorn-status events — and are reported here factually and dated.

Latest developments (newest first)

• January 2026 — 🟢 Regulatory: obtained a BaFin MTF licence to internalise equity trading ahead of the EU PFOF phase-out (exemption expires 30 Jun 2026).

• 17 December 2025 — 🟢 Valuation: €1.2B secondary at €12.5B / ~$14.7B (Dec 2025); Founders Fund (Thiel) increased its stake; new investors reported.

• November 2025 — 🟡 Service quality: portfolio-transfer and dividend-payment delays linked to a system migration.

• September 2025 — 🟢 Expansion: launched in Poland, its first non-eurozone market.

• September 2025 — 🟡 Service quality: tax-billing errors on an Nvidia stock split (one case a €9,686 overcharge).

• April 2025 — 🟡 Reliability: platform outages during high market volatility.

Summary

• Trade Republic is a Berlin-headquartered online broker and bank founded in 2015 in Munich (originally "Neon Trading").

• It was founded by Christian Hecker, Thomas Pischke and Marco Cancellieri.

• In December 2025 it reached a €12.5B valuation (about $14.7B) via a €1.2B secondary share sale, confirming decacorn status.

• It first became Germany's most valuable startup at a $5.3B valuation in May 2021 (Series C, $900M).

• As of mid-2025 it reported 8 million users across 17 countries and €100B in customer assets.

• It has held a full ECB banking licence since December 2023.

• Revenue comes from flat trading commissions, interest income on deposits, and PFOF rebates (about 33% of revenue in 2023) that it is replacing with in-house execution.

• In January 2026 it obtained a BaFin MTF licence ahead of the EU PFOF phase-out.

• For fiscal 2023/24 it reported about €340M in revenue and €34.8M in profit.

• It launched in Poland in September 2025, its first market outside the eurozone.

Startuprad.io's own coverage of Trade Republic

Startuprad.io has tracked Trade Republic since its earliest breakout moments: the 2021 round that first made it Germany's most valuable startup at $5.3B (now more than doubled), and how the neobroker navigated the GameStop wave — an early signal of the retail-investing shift it now rides.

Relationship Map

Entity	Relation	Target	Source (as of)
Trade Republic	FOUNDED_BY / CEO	Christian Hecker	Wikipedia (2026)
Trade Republic	FOUNDED_BY	Thomas Pischke; Marco Cancellieri	Wikipedia (2026)
Trade Republic	LED_ROUND	Sequoia (Series C, May 2021); Ontario Teachers' (2022)	press (2021–22)
Trade Republic	INVESTED_IN / increased stake	Founders Fund (Thiel)	Bloomberg (Dec 2025)
Trade Republic	INVESTED_IN	Accel; TCV; Thrive; Creandum; Project A; new 2025: Fidelity, Wellington, GIC	Tech.eu / Finance Magnates (Dec 2025)
Trade Republic	LICENSED_BY	European Central Bank (banking, Dec 2023); BaFin (MTF, Jan 2026)	Wikipedia (2023–26)
Trade Republic	HEADQUARTERED_IN	Berlin, Germany	Wikipedia (2026)
Trade Republic	PROFILED_BY	Unicorn Atlas by Startuprad.io	Startuprad.io (2026)

Related in the Unicorn Atlas

Explore the Unicorn Atlas pillar — Europe's billion-dollar startups, the DACH unicorn tracker, and our analysis of the European scale-up gap.

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About the host

This edition is produced by Jörn "Joe" Menninger, founder and host of Startuprad.io — the leading English-language podcast and startup-intelligence platform covering Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with 1,700+ episodes since 2014. Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/joernmenninger.