French fintech Qonto is a rare beast in startup land: it's actually profitable. Founded in 2016, the company provides banking and other financial services to 500,000 small businesses customers across eight European markets, helping them do everything from banking to accountancy, lending, savings, and as of recently, payment terminals.

And being in the black gives it plenty of opportunities to expand further, via new product development, acquisitions — and by becoming a fully-licensed bank.

In this episode of the Sifted podcast, CEO Alexandre Prot joins Amy to talk about how soon Qonto might apply for a banking licence, how it's using AI to tackle fraud and what lies ahead on the path to an IPO.

Key moments:

02:30 Acquisition strategy 
14:05 Becoming a ban
19:24 Secondaries and fundraising plans
22:57 IPO?
25:37 Challenges ahead 
28:14 Fraud and AI
35:45 What Alex would do differently building Qonto again