British fintech company Revolut has reported its first full year of profit, with its overdue 2021 accounts showing that revenues tripled as it continues to push for a full UK banking licence.
The company swung into a profit of £26.3m for the year on revenues of £636m, up from £220m in the year prior. Revolut revenues were boosted by an increase of more than 50% in weekly active retail customers and a 75% increase in paid subscriptions, its results showed.
Founded in 2015, the London-headquartered neobank provides debit cards, virtual cards and crypto products. It is pushing to become an all-in-one financial ‘super app’.
With a valuation of $33bn, Revolut has for a while been one of the UK’s most valuable private tech firms – becoming the most valuable in December 2022 after Checkout.com slashed its internal valuation to $11bn.
“We have achieved our first full year of profit and shown that we can accelerate customer growth, at scale, and grow revenue across all of our product lines,” said Revolut co-founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky.
“In 2021 we were granted a full banking licence from the European Central Bank and welcomed millions of new customers. We also launched several new products and saw more activity from our customer base.”
Now that Revolut has published its long overdue accounts, attention will turn to securing a full UK banking licence. Recent reports suggest Rovolut is poised to gain a UK banking licence from regulators in “weeks” after waiting more than two years. Gaining a full banking licence will allow Revolut to join fellow British fintechs Monzo and Starling to lend money to account holders.
“During 2022 we continued to focus on growth and really ramped up marketing and sales efforts for the retail and business ecosystems respectively,” added Mikko Salovaara, Revolut CFO.
“Our investment has seen a real return, with customer growth accelerating in 2022 as we added more than 9 million new customers last year, an increase of 54%.”