The reason for this fall is the sort-of-but-not-really fulfilment of what they told investors they would do with the money. Bankera expected it to be easy for them to get a Lithuanian banking license (which︀ quite a few EMIs have done actually, most prominently Revolut). However, primarily due to the︁ fact that the investors were mostly unidentified (or not identified to the level expected by︂ Lithuania), those funds were deemed unsuitable for the share capital of the bank (as well︃ as a few other reasons). The reasoning for this matter is not as important as︄ the final result - Bankera was unable to meet the promise to investors that they︅ would get a bank license and connect fiat to crypto with their bank.
They made︆ an acquisition of Pacific Private Bank, which they considered meeting the promise - they did︇ in the end product a bank. The bank is still operating and legally licensed in︈ Vanuatu since its 1997 inception. Investors considered this a success when it happened in 2018︉ with statements like "A banking license is expected to be acquired by early 2019." coming︊ up, because it seemed that if Bankera was able to buy a full bank and︋ be supported by Santander, UniCredit, UBS and Standard Chartered, they would probably be able to︌ get licensed.
The co-founders talked about this later, saying they were also working on bank︍ licenses in other countries, and in some, they were moving even quicker than in Lithuania.︎ Well, it's now 4 years later and no banking license here unfortunately. What happened with️ Pacific Private Bank when it was supposed to be used as Bankera's offshore processing? No-one knows.
Since Bankera did launch a product, they just use the Pervesk UAB EMI license given to the cofounders separately, and launched Era Finance Ltd. in Malta - which is registered as an agent of Pervesk. Pervesk is practically the same company (same pricing plans, setup, etc.), but Era Finance owns the trademark and acts as an agent. Bankera is also registered in Lithuania as Bankera UAB, not to be confused with Bankera itself. Bankera UAB has the employees (65 of them) and does "IT work for the banking and︀ EMI sectors". It also has just under 10K EUR in Social Security debt (not too︁ crazy, just a bit strange for a relatively large company).
I don't have much direct︂ experience with Bankera except for a colleague of mine using it - since I wasn't︃ really interested in paying hundreds of EUR just for them to look at my docs.︄ It seems a bit unreasonable. From what I have heard, the solution is not bad︅ and works well with crypto activities, which are nearly unbankable elsewhere. But, the SWIFT fees︆ are super high. Might be alright for SEPA.