Revolut’s revenues dropped by 40% at the start of the coronavirus crisis, but now the neobank has revealed that it is 50% ahead of its pre-pandemic levels and even broke even in November.
Nik Storonsky, CEO and co-founder of Revolut, told CNBC that the FinTech unicorn had balanced its finances in November and that that the challenger bank was “doing much better compared to pre-Covid times.”
The firm previously broke even in December 2018.
The news comes after Revolut reported in August that its annual losses had tripled from £32.8m in 2018 to £107.4m in 2019.
Around the same time, UK-rivals Monzo and Starling Bank also reported that their losses had doubled, motivating market stakeholder to wonder how much trouble the digital alternatives to traditional lenders were really in, especially given their record of sacrificing profitability for aggressive growth.
Although, the losses were reported on the back of Revolut kicking off 2020 by raising a $500m Series D round at a $5.5bn valuation in February, which it then topped up with a $80m round in July.
Revolut also launched in the US this spring and in May it started to operate fully as a European bank through its Lithuanian banking licence. It has also rolled out banking services in Poland and expect to introduce more of its services around Europe in 2021.
Moreover, Storonsky also said in an interview in May that Revolut could leverage the pandemic to diversify its services by acquiring struggling startups offering services, such as travel aggregators.
Commenting on whether or not the neobank could reach profitability, Storonsky told CNBC that Revolut could do so, but that it “depends on how fast we want to grow.”
Revolut now has over 13 million retail banking users and 500,000 business customers.
Nevertheless, Revolut will face competition on several fronts as it continues its European expansion.
Not only will it have to compete with other European challenger banks such as N26 and Lunar, but Starling’s CEO and founder Anne Boden said that it is planning to expand across the continent as well after it achieved profitability in November.
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