Challenger bank Revolut has significantly expanded its customer base in recent months, at a time when many neobanks were facing headwinds.
London-based Revolut says it now has more than 25 million retail customers, marking 25% growth since July. It plans to continue to expand by adding products and entering new geographies in the coming months.
Fintech offers a diverse range of services. The company not only offers remittances, checking accounts and savings accounts (through partner banks), but also cryptocurrency exchanges, investments and the possibility of using airport lounges when a flight is delayed, among other things.
Rafael Henrique/Photographer: Rafael Henrique/SO
Emil Urmanshin, Managing Director of Revolut Crypto, said via email on Thursday that Revolut has seen a 100% increase in customers trading crypto on its platform year-over-year.
Revolut customers initiate over 330 million transactions each month.
“We continue to expand access to fast, secure and easy money transfers from Revolut to countries around the world,” chief technology officer Vlad Yatsenko said in an email to American Banker. “Revolut is redefining the way money is sent and received by simplifying the process of international transfers, offering competitive fees and always offering the best possible exchange rate.”
Yatsenko added that the neobank is waiving fees on transfers between Revolut users.
The company provides consumer and merchant services such as peer-to-peer payments, savings accounts (in the US, through partner Sutton Bank), cryptocurrency trading (with US partner Apex Crypto ), stock trading through Revolut Securities, remittances and in some countries, travel booking.
The company also announced that over the next few months it will launch Revolut Lite, a simplified version of its app that allows users to transfer money cross-border in real time for free, in several countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. East.
Revolut also sees customer acquisition from non-consumer products. More than 2,000 businesses join Revolut Business every week, according to Thursday’s announcement. The business-focused vertical, which launched in 2017 to help manage finances, has processed more than $130 billion in transactions to date.
Dylan Lerner, principal digital banking analyst at Javelin Strategy, said Revolut’s growth continues at a rapid pace, but it’s unclear which offering leads to customer acquisition. He added that he thinks the payments, the challenger bank initial bread and butter, is still a great driver. Lerner said some of Revolut’s product additions, like its vacation booking platform, felt less like relevant brand extensions and more like monetization tactics.
“We understand the value proposition of neobanks that was likely driving their initial popularity and initial growth,” Lerner said in an interview. “Now it’s this question: ‘Where do new customers come from? Why are they coming? Why do people stay? With Revolut, we know where they started. Where are they now? Where they are going is also a big question… I don’t have a clear idea of the direction here.
Revolut is expanding geographically to tap into markets outside of Europe and the UK, where it already has a massive presence. Its fastest growing geographies since July include, in order: the UK, Poland, Romania, France, Spain, Ireland and the US.
“Our mission is to unleash the power of a borderless economy, for everyone, by bringing the world’s first financial super app to every corner of the globe,” International Expansion Manager André Silva said in a statement. prepare.
The challenger bank has built a team of over 400 employees in India and plans to grow a workforce of over 250 between Mexico and Brazil. Revolut’s presence in the US, where it launched in 2020, is relatively small, with around half a million retail customers and over 150 employees. Former Revolut USA Managing Director Ron Oliveira told American Banker in 2021 that he hoped to have 1 million users in the United States by the end of the year. In the past four months, the company has seen 125,000 new US customers.
Thibaut Genevrier, head of merchant acquisition for Revolut, said earlier this year that the company plans to to attack the American market thanks to a major product push towards the end of 2022 and into 2023. The fintech also applied for a California banking charter last year.
“We are working on getting a license on the banking side,” Genevrier said. “But there is no big obstacle.” The company will seek to act more aggressively “when the time is right to invest,” he said.
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