Digital Bank Atom Catches Eye of UK Building Societies

Two of Great Britain’s leading building societies are reportedly weighing bids for FinTech Atom Bank.

That’s according to a report Saturday (May 30) from the Financial Times (FT), which calls this part of a trend of member-owned financial institutions pursuing acquisitions to boost sales.

Yorkshire Building Society and Leeds Building Society, both based in the north of England, are among groups mulling a takeover of Atom, sources familiar with the matter told FT.

Atom’s owners have tapped investment bank Jefferies to handle the sale and hope to get more than £600 million ($807 million) for the lender, the sources said.

This would mark a major uptick in valuation for Atom, which was valued at £350 million when it raised funds last year, FT added, citing PitchBook data. According to the report, some industry executives said they suspect bids could come in at below £600 million.

Other bidders could still make offers, the report added, noting that the interest from Yorkshire and Leeds comes as U.K. building societies are making acquisitions to compete with larger banks and expand their services.

The FT pointed to Nationwide’s $2.7 billion takeover of Virgin Money in 2024, and Coventry Building Society purchase of Co-operative Bank for £780 million ($1 billion) last year.

Launched in 2014 as a digital bank, Atom has amassed a large savings and mortgage book but has trailed rival FinTechs like Revolut or Monzo, which have a respective 70 million and 15 million customers, the report added.

PYMNTS has contacted Atom for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

In other digital banking news, recent PYMNTS Intelligence research shows that these institution’s customers have gone from just experimenting with new payment methods.

“They are increasingly reshaping what mainstream payments behavior looks like, particularly as mobile-first consumers lean into digital wallets and become more comfortable moving money directly from bank accounts,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report, “Pay by Bank Deep Dive: Digital Bank Users Are Ready to Switch,” found that people who use digital-first financial institutions already show many of the behaviors connected with Pay by Bank adoption, such as reliance on tokenized payments, mobile commerce and login-based authentication flows.

The report, conducted with Trustly and based on a survey of 2,071 American consumers, found that digital bank users are not completely rejecting traditional payment methods.

“But they are significantly more likely than other consumers to embrace alternatives to physical cards when incentives and protections are in place,” PYMNTS added.