Feedback: Revolut exceeds 25 million customers

As the successful app pursues a all-important UK licence to continue its expansion, the Lithuanian neo-bank is enjoying record customer numbers and health against the backdrop of the current recession.

FACTS

• Revolut has announced that it has passed the 25 million customer mark (in just over seven years). The goal of 100 million customers, which the neobank had set for itself by 2025, seems a little presumptuous, but not unattainable.

• Since July, 5 million new customers have joined the accounts of the neo-bank, which claims to be opening accounts at a rate of one million per month.

• It has launched up to 20 new products since its inception to date.

• Revolut has reported processing nearly 330 million transactions on a monthly basis, making it one of the most widely used financial apps in the world.

• The company also plans to expand into Brazil, India, Mexico and New Zealand in the coming months following its expansion into the US this year, where it has over half a million retail users.

• Revolut also announced the launch of a light version of its Revolut Lite app, which will aim to improve its accessibility, but will not reduce the speed at which transactions can be made.

• According to the announcement, the Lite service will be launched in Latin America, South East Asia and the Middle East.

CHALLENGES

• A universal ambition: With this new application, Revolut is targeting new markets where phones are less powerful and where the weight of the application can be a critical point in the user experience. Revolut, which makes no secret of its ambitions to be a super-app, also has ambitions to expand into a global market and become one of the largest banks in the world in terms of number of customers.

• The acquisition of the Uk licence is holding back other licences: The company has still not obtained the licence it needs to operate as a banking company in the UK, a position which has impacted on its efforts to obtain licences in other jurisdictions.

• Supervision to increase at the European level: Until now, Revolut's European entity was mainly supervised by the Bank of Lithuania. But after a review early next year, it is likely to reach the threshold of direct supervision by the ECB, which supervises the largest and most systemic banks in the euro area.  Revolut will undergo a "comprehensive assessment", covering everything from asset quality to risk management to internal modelling.

• The start-up's corporate culture is often called into question: the UK's Financial Conduct Authority conducted a review of the company's culture last year. By its own admission, Revolut has a brutally frank internal culture. The company's website boasts of being "radically honest about everyone's performance" and giving honest feedback in a way that "could sometimes hurt". This leads to bad behaviour and makes people very combative with each other. LinkedIn suggests that the median duration is around 0.8 years, lower than the figures for rival fintechs such as UK neobanks Starling and Monzo.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• In an interview with the Irish newspaper Independent, he announced his desire to enter the mortgage market. A way to expand into home loans via a process that is particularly ill-conceived today. The focus will certainly be on the UK. The deployment will not be so much complicated from the point of view of the authorities, but from the point of view of knowledge of the market.

• Today, the bank with the most customers in the world is Nubank. The Brazilian unicorn has 40 million customers in Latin America, but has not yet developed its activities outside Latin America.