Revolut sees revenues soar as customer numbers jump by nearly half in lockdown boost

Revolut has today published its 2020 financial results and it’s safe to say it’s had a bumper year.

The digital banking service saw annual revenues jump 57 per cent from £166m in 2019 to £261m in 2020.

Revolut puts this boost down to an “enhanced appetite for digital financial management” under lockdown, with the fintech widening its trading and investment portfolio continuously over the last 18 months.

As well as seeing revenues surge, the fintech’s customer numbers also increased from 10m at the end of 2019 to 14.5m by the end of 2020, a 45 per cent leap.

Revolut also now counts half a million SMEs as business customers, making it one of the biggest business banking fintechs on the market.

With higher customer numbers comes higher customer deposits. By the end of 2020, customer balances had increased by 96 per cent to £4.6bn compared to £2.4bn in December 2019. 

“As the extraordinary circumstances of 2020 drove the trend towards digital financial management we continued to innovate for customers to make their financial lives easier and accelerate daily use,” Nik Storonsky, CEO and co-founder of Revolut, said.

“We launched 24 new retail and business products, expanded into the US, Japan and Australia and launched banking services in Lithuania, all while significantly improving our profitability. We began 2021 with a more resilient and productive business that will enhance our trajectory towards rapid growth.”

Revolut’s revenue boost has also been helped by an increase in its paying customers. The digital banking service saw Metal and Premium subscribers jump up by over half (51 per cent).

Despite boosted revenues, Revolut's losses also widened, with the digital banking service reporting a £168m loss for 2020, up from £107m in 2019.

The losses can be attributed to administrative costs and bolstering its product and compliance teams with new hires. 

“Revolut entered its next phase of growth in 2020 as we broadened our global footprint, strengthened our capital base, enhanced governance and bolstered executive management,” Revolut’s Chairman, Martin Gilbert, added.   

“These developments continue to provide a strong platform from which to launch new products to serve our rapidly growing customer base.”

Speaking at ETF Stream’s ‘ETF Ecosystem Unwrapped’, Gilbert previously revealed that Revolut would “inevitably” get into asset management, with the former Aberdeen Asset Management CEO adding that the fintech had no immediate plans to enter the space.

Over the course of 2020, Revolut launched in US, Australia and Japan and many more markets are just on the horizon, namely India, with Revolut recently hiring Paroma Chatterjee as the fintech’s India CEO.

UPDATE 21-06-2021 - Article amended to clarify that Revolut's losses increased in 2020.