Bitstack: France's Bitcoin-Native Neobank Raises Its Ambitions

Bitstack, a Y Combinator Summer 2022 company, has taken a small idea, rounding up spare change into bitcoin, and turned it into something much more ambitious: a bitcoin-native neobank for Europe. Founded in 2021 by Alexandre Roubaud and Kabir Sethi, Bitstack started as a simple savings app and has since evolved into a financial platform that aims to rival mainstream neobanks, with bitcoin woven through the core of its design rather than bolted on as a trading feature.

Founded in 2021 and based in Paris, the company’s thesis is that bitcoin is not just a speculative asset but a fundamentally new kind of money that deserves a proper banking experience built around it. Bitstack frames the product as “all things money, with better money,” a play on the bigger bet that once consumers have a convenient way to save, spend, and manage their finances in bitcoin, they will gravitate toward it over time. The company has already become France’s number-one bitcoin savings app, a meaningful foothold in a market that has historically been cautious about crypto-native banking products. A 5 million euro funding round, announced to “reinvent the bank of tomorrow,” gave the company the capital to build out the broader neobank surface area beyond its original round-up feature.

The founders bring complementary strengths to the mission. Alexandre Roubaud, Bitstack’s co-founder and CEO, previously led product at Moka, Canada’s fastest-growing saving and investing app, which was ultimately acquired by Mogo, and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University. That experience with mass-market savings products is evident in Bitstack’s focus on approachability: the company openly states that getting started with bitcoin should be simple, fun, and accessible to everyone, not something reserved for crypto natives. Co-founder and CTO Kabir Sethi is focused on lowering the barrier to entry to saving in bitcoin across Europe, a mission that requires not just consumer-grade UX but also deep integration with European banking rails and regulation.

The opportunity is sizeable. Europe has been a leader in modern neobanking, with Revolut, N26, and others reshaping how millions of Europeans interact with their money, but most of those banks treat bitcoin as a side feature, not a core primitive. Meanwhile, European consumers have shown a growing appetite for alternatives to traditional savings accounts in a low-yield, high-inflation environment. Bitstack is positioning itself in the narrow but valuable space between “crypto exchange” and “traditional neobank,” giving users a single app to manage their everyday money while building a long-term bitcoin position in the background.

With 16 employees and a growing footprint in France, Bitstack is still early in its expansion story, but the direction of travel is clear. The round-up feature that first hooked users has turned into a flywheel for a broader set of financial products, and the team is building toward a neobank that can stand on its own merits, whether or not customers care about the underlying asset class. In a category often defined by hype cycles, Bitstack’s quiet, product-led approach is a notable signal of how crypto-native finance is maturing.