German online broker and bank
Trade Republic is Europe's leading mobile-first investment platform, headquartered in Berlin and holding a full German banking licence since 2023 that upgraded its earlier securities trading bank licence.
Founded in 2015 by Christian Hecker, Thomas Pischke and Marco Cancellieri, the company offers commission-free stock, ETF and crypto trading, fractional shares, recurring savings plans, and an interest-bearing euro cash account that pays ECB deposit rates to customers.
Trade Republic grew from a boutique brokerage into one of Europe's largest retail brokers by assets under custody, estimated at over 100 billion euros as of 2024, and serves more than 8 million customers across Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Ireland and several other European markets.
Investors include Sequoia Capital, Accel, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, TCV, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Creandum, with total equity raised above 1.1 billion euros and a peak valuation of 5 billion euros in 2022. The upgrade from securities-trading-bank to full universal-bank licence in December 2023 enabled Trade Republic to accept customer deposits directly rather than parking them with partner banks.
Trade Republic's structure is a clean counter-example to the SE pattern seen in Delivery Hero, Zalando and HelloFresh: it is still a German GmbH, not an AG or SE, and yet it holds one of the most valuable regulatory permissions in Berlin. The operating entity is Trade Republic Bank GmbH, which obtained a BaFin Wertpapierhandelsbank licence in 2019 and upgraded to a full Kreditinstitut licence in December 2023.
That the licence sits in a GmbH rather than an AG is a reminder that German banking law permits both corporate forms to hold credit-institution authorisation, although AGs are the overwhelming norm for banks because listing-readiness and governance expectations push larger institutions that way.
Trade Republic's choice to remain a GmbH is informed by its still-private status and its relatively flat cap table: Sequoia, Accel, Founders Fund and Ontario Teachers' hold preferred-equivalent GmbH shares documented in a shareholders' agreement rather than a formal articles-of-association share-class regime. This keeps corporate governance lightweight compared with an AG supervisory board.
If Trade Republic pursues an IPO, expect a GmbH-to-AG conversion followed by possible SE re-registration, mirroring the HelloFresh and Zalando templates.
The company also uses a European passport under MiFID II and CRD to serve customers across the EEA from its Berlin licence, without needing local subsidiaries in each market. A Luxembourg subsidiary provides certain custody functions, and an Austrian subsidiary handles some country-specific regulatory relationships, but the overwhelming legal and operational centre of gravity sits in Berlin.
For founders, Trade Republic demonstrates that a Berlin GmbH can scale to a multi-billion valuation with a banking licence, without any SE conversion, as long as the cap table remains private and the cross-border complexity is handled through passporting rather than subsidiary networks.
German banking law allows both GmbH and AG entities to hold Kreditinstitut licences, although AGs dominate among listed banks. Trade Republic has remained a GmbH because it is still privately held with a relatively flat cap table of venture and pension investors, and the GmbH's simpler governance with managing directors rather than a supervisory board reduces overhead.
If Trade Republic pursues a public listing, expect a GmbH-to-AG conversion followed by possible SE re-registration, mirroring templates from Zalando and HelloFresh.
In December 2023 Trade Republic upgraded from a Wertpapierhandelsbank (securities-trading bank) licence to a full Kreditinstitut (credit institution) licence under section 32 of the Kreditwesengesetz.
This allows Trade Republic to accept customer deposits directly, pay interest on cash balances from its own balance sheet rather than via partner banks, and offer a broader range of banking products including lending in future. The upgrade places Trade Republic under the same regulatory framework as N26, although N26 is supervised by the ECB while Trade Republic remains under BaFin direct supervision.
No. Trade Republic uses MiFID II and Capital Requirements Directive passporting rights to serve customers across the European Economic Area from its Berlin licence. BaFin notifies host-state regulators of cross-border service provision, and customers in France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and other markets are contractually with Trade Republic Bank GmbH in Berlin.
Some country-specific subsidiaries exist for regulatory liaison or tax reasons, but they are not separate licensed entities.
Trade Republic is privately held by its founders Christian Hecker, Thomas Pischke and Marco Cancellieri together with venture and pension investors including Sequoia Capital, Accel, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, TCV, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Creandum.
The company raised more than 1.1 billion euros in equity across multiple rounds and reached a peak post-money valuation of approximately 5 billion euros in a 2022 round. More recent valuations have not been disclosed publicly but secondary transactions have implied values in the same range.
