Revolut’s breakneck pace of expansion will be supported by another $250m, courtesy of DST Global and other investors.
The banking alternative has closed a landmark series C round, bringing its valuation to $1.7bn just three years removed from launch. Its valuation has ballooned by more than five times since its last fundraising round, a $66m series B led by Index Ventures in July of last year.
Hong Kong-based DST Global, a global investment group founded in 2009 by Yuri Milner, led the series C round. Alongside it were a host of new and existing investors, including other well-known Silicon Valley backers such as Ribbit Capital. With the $250m banked, Revolut has now raised a grand total of $340m to date.
“To have DST Global on board is an incredible endorsement of our business strategy as we begin to expand Revolut around the world,” said Nikolay Storonsky, founder and CEO of Revolut. “Banking has historically avoided disruptions by technology, but that is all about to change on a big scale.”
In a release announcing the fundraise, Revolut provided some numbers to illustrate its growth. The digital bank is well-known for boasting about the number of users it has signed up; currently that figure stands at almost 2 million. Of those, it sees 250,000 daily active users, and is signing up between 6,000 and 8,000 new users each day. The company has set its sights on hitting 100 million customers in the next five years, in a move reminiscent of peer-to-peer lender Funding Circle’s pledge to be lending $100bn a year globally by 2025.
In tandem to growing its user-base, Revolut has also been expanding its product set and branching out into new markets at a feverish pace. This year alone, it has launched a low-cost cryptocurrency trading service and a new ‘Vaults’ feature, allowing users to round-up purchases to make savings out of spare change, à la Moneybox.
An interesting twist to this heady growth story is the fact that thousands of individual investors are along for the ride. Revolut raised £4m via Seedrs in a fundraising campaign that, in the end, proved a foregone conclusion. More than £17m of capital had been pledged by over 40,000 individual investors prior to the campaign going live – with shares ultimately allocated via random ballot.
Revolut confirmed for AltFi that it will not stage an equity crowdfunding campaign as part of its series C fundraise, or indeed as part of any future fundraises.
"We are absolutely delighted that Seedrs alumni, Revolut, has just become a UK unicorn. This is a testament to their proposition, excellence in execution, and impressive growth since their round on Seedrs last year, which broke numerous crowdfunding records," said Jeff Kelisky, CEO at Seedrs. "Revolut has been one of the highest traded companies on the Seedrs Secondary Market and now it's even more exciting that our investors will be able to trade Revolut shares at 3.6x their investment in less than six months."
A year prior to its Seedrs round, Revolut raised £1.01m from 433 investors on Crowdcube at a valuation of £42m ($58m). Crowdcube says that returns for those investors are currently at 25 times on paper.
“Revolut is a crowdfunded unicorn – this is a watershed moment for the finance sector and exactly why Crowdcube was started; to give anyone the chance to invest in the next big thing,” said Crowdcube co-founder Luke Lang.
For an insight into how Revolut manages its rapid growth, see our recent interview with Rishi Stocker, who is helping to lead the banking app’s expansion in Japan.
