Qonto
Verified“French-run EU bank-in-waiting, still renting US cloud.”
- Customers
- 600k+
- Funding
- ~€622m
- Founded
- 2016/17
- Regulator
- ACPR (FR)
67 = midpoint of Control 75 & Data 58
Sovereignty Quadrant
Control ↑ who owns & governs the company · Data → where your data lives. Every dot is a company — click to open it.
Every number below traces to 13 sourced facts across 8 independent sources, last verified 2026-06-12. 3 open questions hold confidence at 82% — they lower confidence, never the score.
Control ↑
Who legally and economically controls the company
Legal & Jurisdiction
92
Incorporated and headquartered in France as Qonto SA (formerly Olinda SAS); ACPR-regulated payment institution; the operating entity sits squarely inside the EU and is directly subject to EU/French law and supervision. Banking-license application is pending but does not change current jurisdiction. Near-textbook EU legal footing.
Why 92? 4 sourced facts · click to expand
Legal entity and registered office
Qonto Legal Notice (official) · as of 2026-06-12
Renamed/converted from Olinda SAS to Qonto SA
Qonto blog (Olinda devient Qonto SA) · as of 2026-01-29
Regulatory status
Qonto Imprint (official) · as of 2026-06-12
French banking-licence application pending (not yet granted)
TechCrunch · as of 2025-07-02
Control & Ownership
58
Privately held, French-founder-led (Anavi/Prot), which likely preserves EU voting control. But the economic base is heavily non-EU: the €622m+ raised pulled in Tiger Global, TCV, DST Global, Tencent, Thiel-linked Valar, Insight and KKR alongside EU funds Alven and Eurazeo. EU voting over a substantially non-EU economic majority; not listed.
Why 58? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
French founders / control
Qonto Legal Notice (official) · as of 2026-06-12
Series D investor base is largely non-EU
Tech.eu · as of 2022-01-11
Total funding and valuation
FinTech Global · as of 2022-01-11
Data →
Where your data lives and who can reach it
Data & Infrastructure
38
Core data is hosted in the EEA on Google Cloud, but Qonto's own legal notice names US hosting (Heroku, San Francisco) and AWS EMEA (Luxembourg, US parent) for web properties — i.e. US-hyperscaler dependence with CLOUD Act exposure. The privacy notice admits transfers outside the EU under SCCs. Qonto is a named customer 'gradually migrating' to Thales-owned S3NS PREMI3NS (SecNumCloud, extraterritorial-law immune) — a real sovereignty path, but migration is not complete, so today's footing is mid-low.
Why 38? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Stated web hosting providers
Qonto Legal Notice (official) · as of 2026-06-12
Gradual migration to sovereign cloud
S3NS / Thales press release · as of 2025-12-19
International data transfers acknowledged
Qonto Privacy Notice (official) · as of 2026-06-12
Operations & People
88
HQ in Paris, French founder-CEO, ~2,300 employees concentrated in Europe, EUR reporting, and operations confined to EU markets (FR, DE, IT, ES, AT, BE, PT, NL). Operationally one of the most EU-centered fintechs of its size; secondary hub in Berlin via the German branch.
Why 88? 3 sourced facts · click to expand
Headquarters & leadership
Qonto Imprint (official) · as of 2026-06-12
Workforce & markets
TechCrunch · as of 2025-07-02
German branch
Qonto Imprint (official) · as of 2026-06-12
Aligned to the EU Commission’s official Cloud Sovereignty Framework (SEAL, Jun 2026) →
What we don’t know
3 open questions — they lower confidence, never the score
- ?
Exact post-Series-D cap table and voting structure — what share of voting rights and economic ownership sit with EU vs non-EU investors and founders today.
Directly affects the ownership score; EU voting control is inferred from founder leadership, not from a verified shareholder register.
- ?
Where regulated banking/transaction data physically resides today and the completion status of the S3NS PREMI3NS migration.
If core financial data is already on EEA Google Cloud and migrating to sovereign PREMI3NS, infra could be materially higher than scored; if still substantially on US hyperscalers, the current score holds.
- ?
Whether the renamed Qonto SA legal notice will retire US hosting (Heroku) for production once on PREMI3NS.
Determines whether CLOUD Act exposure on web/data layers is being fully eliminated or only partially.
EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework lens
SEAL targets cloud/infrastructure providers; this is an analogous sovereignty mapping for a fintech, not a certification or an audit.
Strategic
Explicit EU-only positioning, French banking-licence ambition, and a public move toward sovereign cloud.
Legal & jurisdictional
Incorporated and run in France as Qonto SA; ACPR-supervised; fully within EU legal reach.
Data & AI
Core data in EEA on Google Cloud; admitted SCC-based transfers outside EU; sovereign migration underway but incomplete.
Operational
Paris HQ, French leadership, ~2,300 EU-based staff, EUR reporting, 8 EU markets.
Supply chain
Key web/infra vendors include US Heroku and AWS-Luxembourg (US parent); vendor sovereignty in transition.
Technological
Runs on Google Cloud technology; migrating to Thales-owned S3NS PREMI3NS (Google-tech under French control).
Security & compliance
Regulated financial entity under ACPR/BaFin; target sovereign cloud is SecNumCloud 3.2 qualified.
Environmental sustainability
No primary-source ESG/energy disclosure reviewed in this profile.
EU alternatives
Itself a leading EU-sovereign business-banking option; strongest among EU SME neobanks on legal/operational footing.
EU (NL/Lithuania-licensed) SME banking peer; verify cap table and hosting before treating as fully sovereign.
French full credit-institution (banking licence) serving SMEs; deeper EU regulatory status than a payment institution.
How the method works
Methodology v2 (provisional): the score is the midpoint of two axes — Control (who owns and governs the company) and Data (where your data lives and who can reach it). Each axis is scored only on verified evidence; unknowns reduce confidence, never the score. Every input below is sourced; the weights and judgments are open to challenge.
Spotted an error? Every claim is sourced — challenge it and we correct the record.
- 2026-06-12 — Initial golden profile, authored from primary sources (human + AI review).
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Verified 2026-06-12 · Human + AI joint review (sources independently checked) · Methodology