Banking app Revolut has today announced that it broke even for the first time in December, and has now surpassed 1.5m customers after increasing customer acquisition by 50 per cent in two months.
Its monthly transaction volume surged past $1.5bn in late 2017, which was an increase of over 700 per cent in 12 months. Revolut’s founder Nikolay Storonsky has said this was due to strong user growth and an uptake of its products, but that the firm’s focus is purely on expansion.
No other British digital bank has yet managed to clear a single month without taking losses, and those in Europe have yet to declare details on their financial status. Revolut is also the only British-based neobanking challenger to have made it out of the UK and create a strong user base across Europe, with user numbers in France, Switzerland, Germany and the Nordics escalating by 50 per cent in the last two months.
Challenger banks outside of the "neobank" category have proved that profitability is a possibility for the industry, with MetroBank becoming profitable over the weekend and unicorn Oaknorth turning a profit within 11 months of launching back in 2016.
Storonsky commented in a statement: “Instead of becoming a bank from day one, we chose to focus our time and resources on product development and customer acquisition. This strategy is clearly paying off as we are have now firmly positioned ourselves as the market leader in Europe and soon the world.”
The banking app is currently planning its next batch of countries for expansion, with talks being held in India, South Africa, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
“Whilst it is encouraging to see that our business model is working, becoming a profitable business is not our priority right now,” he added.
“We are completely focused on expanding Revolut to as many countries around the world as possible, with the United States, Singapore and Australia almost ready to go.”
Revolut is now signing up between 6k to 8k new customers each day, with its app seeing 350k daily active users and over 800k monthly users.
The platform recently opened up its cryptocurrency feature to all of its users, and added the XRP/Ripple coin to its growing list of alternative currencies available to buy, sell and exchange on the app.
