Revolut

Revolut Group Holdings Ltd, doing business as Revolut, is a British multinational neobank and fintech company that offers banking services for individuals and businesses. It was founded in July 2015 by British-Russian businessman Nikolay Storonsky and British-Ukrainian software engineer Vlad Yatsenko. The company offers services in 48+ countries, though the extent of its banking licenses varies by region.
The bank offers free and subscription-based digital banking services, primarily through a mobile app. Features include domestic and international bank transfers, debit cards, credit cards, a stock and cryptocurrency exchange, as well as other features such as savings accounts and loans.
As of August 2024, Revolut is valued at $45 billion, making it the most valuable private tech company in Europe.
Revolut was founded on the 1 July 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, offering individuals in the United Kingdom and European Economic Area (EEA) a smartphone app linked to a pre-paid Mastercard to spend money abroad using interbank foreign exchange rate. Customers could use their Revolut card in 90 countries. The company states that its exchange rates are competitive. They also said their vision was to build a payments platform that enable customers and merchants to make low-cost instant payments and marketing platform. The company was originally based in Level39, a financial technology incubator in Canary Wharf, London.
The same month, the company raised £1.5 million during a seed funding round. This was followed by a Series A round the following year, where Revolut raised over £6.75 million, which put them at a total valuation of about £42 million at the time. By that time, they reached around 300,000 users, processing almost £1 billion in transactions according to the company.
Building on its initial success, Revolut then launched a subscription-based app in June 2017 available to businesses across the UK and Europe. Under the name of "Revolut Business", businesses could create an account with a multi-currency IBAN to hold, exchange, and transfer money with 25 currencies. Following the launch of Revolut Business, the company raised $66 million during a Series B round in July 2017 with the goal to expand across Asia and the United States.
The company was also affected by a major outage with their card processor Global Processing Services in June 2017, causing card payments to fail. Revolut experienced a similar outage along other companies, such as Monzo, back in March of the same year.
Until now, Revolut was only operating as an electronic money institution in the United Kingdom under the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). They first applied for their EU banking license in November 2017, at which time they also started work on their own payment processor. The bank then received its EU banking license as well as an EMI license in December 2018 from the European Central Bank, facilitated by the Bank of Lithuania. Under their new license, the bank could accept deposits and offer consumer credits. However, they were not allowed to provide investment services until later. Stock trading was then made available in July 2019, where customers could now perform commission-free trade on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Initially, this was only available for customers in Revolut's "Metal" subscription plan, but available to all users later on.
Following the acquisition of a banking license, the company announced plans in September 2019 for expansion into 24 new markets across the United States, Asia, and other regions, supported by agreements with Visa and Mastercard. The company said that they also want to hire an additional 3,500 employees. Earlier that year, it had already expanded into Australia, marking its first expansion outside of Europe. The following month, Revolut expanded to Singapore, becoming the company's first Asian market. By 2020, they had also launched in the United States and Japan.
By November 2020, Revolut reported that it had reached breakeven. At that time, it was valued at £4.2 billion, making it one of the highest-valued fintech companies in the UK. The company's valuation was brought further during a Series E round in July 2021, with a $800 million funding round bringing them to $33 billion.
The company applied for banking license in the United Kingdom and a bank charter in the United States in early 2021. The European Central Bank also granted Revolut a full banking licence later that year.
After having secured bank licenses, Revolut started moving away from being an e-money institution to a bank. In January 2022, they started operating as a bank in 10 additional European countries: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden.
The Financial Times reported in July 2023 that Revolut had lost $20 million to organized criminal groups due to a flaw in its US payment system between late 2021 and early 2022. The issue affected the company's corporate funds and not customer accounts; some of the money was recouped. Later that year, Revolut announced that they would stop offering cryptocurrency trading services to their US customers due to the "evolving regulatory environment" as the Securities and Exchange Commission intensified regulations regarding certain crypto assets and platforms.
The company became target of a cyberattack in September 2022. An unauthorized third party briefly obtained access to a small portion (0.16%) of customer details. While no funds were accessed or stolen, personal data of over 50,000 customers was accessed by the perpetrator. In the same month, The UK's Financial Conduct Authority added Revolut to its list of companies authorized to offer cryptocurrency products and services. Before, the company had offered crypto trading since 2017, but it was not regulated.
In January 2023, the company announced that it would transfer its 2 million Irish customers to a new Irish branch, moving them from a Lithuanian IBAN to an Irish IBAN. This was followed by a launch for IBANs in France, Netherlands and Spain in September 2023.
Revolut launched a subscription tier named "Ultra" for individuals in the UK and EEA in June 2023, which was the company's most expensive subscription at the time. Around this time, the bank also began allowing staking for holders of proof of stake cryptocurrencies in the UK and EEA, a feature used by various cryptocurrencies such as Cardano or Polkadot at the time. In October 2023, Revolut expanded its stock trading services to include commission-free European stock trading in the EEA, aligning with similar offerings from other fintech platforms. By the end of the year, it was reported that they reached customer deposits of £15.1 billion. It was also reported that, despite ongoing uncertainty regarding the UK banking license, the company swung to a £25m loss in 2022 after giving out higher wages to staff. This included a near 80% pay jump for its founder and the highest-paid director.
As of June 2024, Revolut has reached 45 million customers globally. In August, the company was seen to be preparing for a potential IPO on the Nasdaq in the United States with an expected valuation of approximately £45 billion, although UK politicians were said to be pushing for a London listing. The company also doubled its headcount over the past two years, employing over 8,000 people in more than 25 countries. The company faced criticism from local Portuguese banks about unfair competition after its subsidiary, "Revolut Bank UAB", was granted a full banking license by the ECB. Revolut was also granted a British banking license the following month, though with restrictions via the standard "mobilization" stage.
A report in October 2024 found that Revolut was named in more fraud complaints in the UK than any major bank in the country, sparking a debate on the effectiveness of its security controls. It was stated that many customers had to turn to the financial ombudsman service after falling victim to fraud earlier that year. By the end of 2024, Revolut reported having 50 million registered users globally. In 2023, they had over one million daily active users.
The company raised £6.5 million ($8.5 million) in a Series A funding round in 2016. An additional £17.1 million was raised on an equity crowdfunding site. A year later, $66 million was raised in a Series B funding round. Index Ventures, Balderton Capital, and Ribbit Capital all participated.
On 26 April 2018, Revolut raised $250 million in Series C funding. It had a post-funding valuation of US$1.7 billion, making it a unicorn. In February 2020, Revolut completed a Series D funding round of $580 million that more than trebled its value, valuing the company at £4.2 billion and becoming the United Kingdom's most valuable financial technology startup.
The company achieved unicorn status in April 2018, after receiving €205 million in investments during Series C round funding, which valued the company at over €1.4 billion.
In July 2021, Revolut's Series E raised US$800 million from investors, including SoftBank Group and Tiger Global Management, at a US$33 billion valuation. This made Revolut the leading European startup in terms of valuation.
As of June 2023, Revolut has raised $1.7 billion in total funding.
In August 2024, Revolut announced a secondary share sale that valued the company at $45 billion, up from its previous valuation of $33 billion in 2021.
Revolut offers banking services including GBP and EUR bank accounts, debit cards, credit cards, currency exchange with over 25 fiat currencies, stock trading, cryptocurrency exchange and peer-to-peer payments. Revolut's mobile app supports spending and ATM withdrawals in 120 currencies and transfers in 36 currencies. Similar multi-currency features are available from competing fintech companies. Revolut's credit card is available in Poland, Lithuania, the United States, and Ireland. Crypto cannot be deposited or spent, only converted back to fiat inside Revolut. Additionally, Revolut banks with Metropolitan Commercial Bank of New York, which does not allow the transfer of fiat money to or from cryptocurrency exchanges.
Users with a personal Revolut account have access to services in some markets including payments and cards, savings, credit, investment and trading, cryptocurrency trading, multi-currency accounts, shared accounts, premium lifestyle features, and donations.
Revolut complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), a regulatory requirement for financial institutions handling card transactions, which ensures end-to-end security of information and protection of funds. The standards are internationally recognized regulations set to protect cardholder data.
Revolut Bank UAB, licensed by the European Central Bank, provides deposit account services in 30 EEA markets. Customers in those markets have access to deposit protection of up to €100,000 to their accounts for free. This is covered by the Lithuanian State company Deposit and Investment Insurance.
As an electronic money institution, Revolut protects funds via Safeguarding. Using this process, funds are held at partner banks where they receive the safeguards provided by banking institutions. Revolut will soon be able to directly take customer deposits as part of the FSCS scheme following its approval for a UK banking licence.
Revolut has been subject to criticism and many controversies in the past, such as issues with customer support and long-lasting lockouts, as well as anti-money laundering compliance failures, lack of support for defrauded customers, and even claims of ties to the Russian government which the company strongly denied.
In March 2019, Wired published an exposé of the company's employment practices and work culture. They found evidence of unpaid work, high staff turnover and employees feeling the need to work weekends in order to meet performance indicators. A later article in December 2019 by Sifted noted that Revolut had a higher rating than its peers on Glassdoor.
In June 2020, Wired published a further exposé of Revolut's dismissal of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which employees, particularly in Kraków, were given the choice of being terminated for underperformance or a mutual agreement to leave the company voluntarily, in order to reduce the headline number of 62 redundancies announced by Revolut. The report said "Current and former Revolut employees say staff were coerced into accepting terminations, even though the company had no legal grounds to fire them" and that employees in Porto were pressured into agreeing to a salary sacrifice scheme in order to keep their jobs. According to Wired, in a message sent to the 495-strong customer support team on Slack soon after the salary sacrifice scheme was announced, head of Support Inna Grynova urged them to participate.
Revolut, in common with traditional financial institutions, uses algorithms to identify money laundering, fraud, and other criminal activity. Under certain anti-money laundering legislation, if suspicious activities are being investigated, bank staff are not allowed to tell customers why their accounts have been frozen.
It has been reported since 2020 that Revolut's algorithms suspended accounts for weeks or months at a time after unusual activity was detected. Revolut's policies require customers whose accounts were suspended to request a resolution via in-app chat support. Revolut said that "the system is programmed to temporarily lock an account and place it in a queue, until one of our compliance agents can review the case".
In February 2020, The Daily Telegraph reported that Revolut suspended an account containing £90,000 for more than two months and that another customer travelled 500 miles from Auvergne in France to Revolut's London offices in an unsuccessful attempt to recover £15,000 in an account that Revolut had frozen with no justification given. The account was later closed and the money in it returned to the customer's other bank accounts.
Also in February 2020, The Times reported that Revolut suspended and later closed a business account containing €300,000 belonging to Priorité Energie, an energy transition start-up company, preventing the company from paying its staff. Revolut publicly apologised and eventually rectified the problem.
There were further reports in 2021 of Revolut withholding clients' funds.
In 2023, Revolut reported a 35% reduction in APP fraud. However, the company remained one of the most frequently named financial institutions in UK fraud complaints, prompting scrutiny of its security measures. The number of complaints of fraud reported to Action Fraud, the UK reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, by Revolut customers rose from 567 in February 2023 to 1,086 for February 2024.
Prior to Revolut having a banking license, complaints were made by defrauded Revolut customers to the Financial Ombudsman, who in some cases required Revolut to reimburse and compensate victims, and remove fraud markers wrongly placed against the individuals.
Many financial service customers in the UK have been subject to fraud, but Revolut has been involved in more cases than any major High Street bank, and has a reputation for not reimbursing victims, which full banks are more likely to do. ActionFraud received 10,000 reports of fraud naming Revolut in 2023, 2,000 more than Barclays, one of the UK's largest banks, and twice as many as a competitor bank of similar size to Revolut. That year over 3,500 complaints about Revolut were made to the ombudsman, more than any other financial institution. Consumer organization Which? did not recommend banking large sums of money with Revolut, saying "They have a track record of not reimbursing people who fall victim to fraud or find themselves in this incredibly difficult situation, [and] of money being taken from accounts even after scam activity has been reported."