- Foreign exchange startup Revolut has 16,000 business customers four months after launch. Signing up 3,000 to 3,500 new retail customers each day. Plans to launch in the US, Australia, Canada, Singapore, and Hong Kong in the first quarter of 2018.
LONDON – Foreign exchange startup Revolut is expanding rapidly, signing up 16,000 companies to its business accounts in just four months.
CEO Nikolay Storonsky disclosed the figure during a presentation at the LendIt Europe conference in London on Tuesday. Storonsky said Revolut is signing up 40 to 50 new businesses a day and hopes to scale that sign-up rate to 100 business a day. The two-year-old startup launched business accounts in June.
London-based Revolut, founded in 2015, offers a pre-paid card linked to an app that lets people buy, hold, and transfer money in multiple currencies at low rates. The company has since branched out into lending and insurance and Storonsky told Business Insider that its ambition is to become a “global banking alternative.”
Revolut’s core retail accounts also continue to grow rapidly, with 3,000 to 3,500 new sign ups each day.
Storonsky told Business Insider that 60% of new signups come from continental Europe, while the rest come from the UK. Britain is Revolut's biggest retail market, followed by France, Spain, Greece, and Lithuania.
The startup now has 900,000 customers and has processed $5 billion-worth of transactions since launch, Storonsky said. It has 180,000 daily active users and 600,000 customers who use the app at least once a month.
Revolut was forced to temporarily stop issuing new cards at the end of last year after a partner found some cards were being issued outside of Europe. The startup is now "putting a lot of resource into compliance" to facilitate its rapid growth, Storonsky said.
"The way we split it, compliance consists of two teams: compliance services, people who just follow processes that we set up; and compliance product - developers, designers, data sciences who design products, for example, onboarding, know your customer, know your business, issuing fraud, acquiring fraud etc. etc.," Storonsky said.
"Overall in compliance, we have definitely more than 30 people now. We scale it ahead of growth. Recently we hired a lot of people in compliance."
Storonsky said Revolut's plans to launch in-app cryptocurrency buying and trading have been delayed by a partner but said he thought the feature would now launch within "two or three weeks."
"I think in terms of engagement, it will be much higher, just because we see there is a huge demand for bitcoin from all of our customers," Storonsky said of the new feature. "I'm getting bombarded all the time, when are you launching cryptocurrencies etc. etc.
"At the moment, the process to buy crypto, there is a friction there - you need to pass KYC, you need to verify your bank account, your cards. It takes time. With Revolut, you're already onboarded - you just see bitcoin appear in your currency exchange wallet and then you buy or sell. It's very easy."
Revolut plans to launch in the US, Australia, Canada, Singapore, and Hong Kong all by the end of the first quarter of 2018, Storonsky says.
The startup raised £50 million at a reported valuation of £300 million in June.
