Fintech startup Revolut can’t stop and won’t stop growing. The company has had an amazing month of December with a huge increase in the total volume of transactions and signups. Because of that, Revolut broke even in December for the first time ever.
The company told me that it wasn’t just a lucky month and January is looking good as well. Revolut announced that it had reached a million registered users back in November. Three months later, Revolut now has 1.5 million customers.
On average, Revolut now manages to attract between 6,000 and 8,000 new users per day. While social networks or messaging apps would be reasonably happy with those numbers, it’s ridiculously high when you compare this growth rate with good old banks.
But the company is aware that it started off as a foreign exchange service. After signing up, you can top up your account using a debit card or a wire transfer. You can then exchange money into another currency and send it to a bank account. Revolut also sends you a debit card so that you can pay anywhere in the world with little exchange fees.
Revolut now wants to convert those happy travelers into daily activer users. The app provides a better experience than most banking apps, and you can enable and disable debit card features in just a few seconds. And of course, the company has been adding new features to handle nearly everything you need to replace your bank account.
You can now buy travel insurance, trade bitcoins, get a personal IBAN and open a credit line with your Revolut account. 350,000 users open Revolut every day. And the company has 800,000 monthly active users.
Revolut now manages around $1.5 billion in transaction every month — this number is up 700 percent year over year. And this number should increase as well as Revolut plans to launch in the U.S., Singapore and Australia later this year. India, Brazil, South Africa and the UAE should come later.
More importantly, margins are pretty thin for fintech startups. For instance, it took TransferWise six years to reach profitability (TransferWise reports a monthly volume of $2.1 billion/£1.5 billion).
Many people believed startups that are competing with retail banks would have a hard time making money — the big banks in London make money on trading and credit after all. So today’s news is an encouraging sign for the space.