Intro
About Revolut
Revolut is a financial technology company that provides banking services. Their ambition is to build “the world’s first truly global financial super app.”
Revolut is a group of companies held together by their parent company, Revolut Ltd. Even though at the time of writing Revolut is not operating as a full-fledged bank in all the countries where it’s present, it is working toward that goal. The company holds a banking license in Lithuania and in early 2021 it applied for a UK banking license as well as a bank charter in the US.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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The company and its environment:
History, Founders, Customer base, Revolut share, Criticism and controversies, Competitors -
Our analysis and guides on Revolut:
Review 2022, Fees, Account opening, Deposit, Withdrawal, Trading,
Markets and products, Research, Buying shares, Cards, Safety, Crypto, Currencies -
Services offered:
Currency exchange, Payment cards, Insurance, Subscription, Stocks trading, Crypto trading, Budgeting -
Legal background:
Countries served, Legal entities, Regulation
When it comes to client deposit protection, the picture is a bit complex. Clients registered under Revolut Bank UAB (typically EU residents) are insured under the Lithuanian State Company's “Deposit and Investment Insurance” scheme. On the other hand, Revolut does not offer deposit protection for customers registered with Revolut Payments UAB and Revolut LTD as both entities hold an e-money license only.
Revolut Payments UAB is an electronic money institution, which means, the entity itself can’t hold client assets. However, Revolut safeguards clients' assets as required by the FSCS. This means, that funds are distributed and protected by banks, as required by the regulator. These banks used to include Barclays and Lloyds.
On this page, we collected all the important information about Revolut. For a more in-depth analysis, click on the links at the end of each paragraph or see our detailed assessment in the Revolut review for 2022.
History
Revolut launched in the UK in 2015, providing money transfer and exchange services. Today, Revolut customers around the world use Revolut accounts and cards to make more than 100 million transactions a month. After receiving a banking license from the European Central Bank in December 2018, Revolut serves both personal and business customers. Revolut offers current accounts and debit cards through an e-money license in the UK, while its UK and US bank license applications are pending. Revolut, which remains a private company, raised $800 million from investors in July 2021, putting the company’s valuation at $33 billion.
Founders
Nikolay Storonsky and Vladyslav Yatsenko founded Revolut in 2015 in London, England.
Nik, a British-Russian entrepreneur, is the co-founder & CEO of Revolut.
- He studied for a master's degree in physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
- He completed a separate master's in economics at New Economic School in Moscow.
- Prior to founding Revolut, Storonsky worked as a trader at Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers.
Vlad, a British-Ukrainian entrepreneur, is the co-founder & CTO of Revolut.
- He holds a master’s degree in computer science from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
- Before starting Revolut, he worked in IT for UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, and other non-financial companies.
- Yatsenko is an experienced software developer in Oracle, PL/SQL, Firebird DB, Delphi, Java, etc.
- He is , and is responsible for ‘delivering Revolut’.
Customer base
Revolut had 15.5 million customers in Q1 2021, up by 1.1 million from the end of 2020. Compared to the 10 million users they had in 2019, the customer base showed a spectacular 55% growth in just 5 financial quarters. The UK-based neobank plans to have 5 million bank account holders by 2025.
The number of Revolut business accounts crossed the 500,000 mark in 2020, more than doubling from 220,000 in 2019.
Revolut’s share price
Revolut is not a publicly listed company, therefore its shares are not traded publicly.
Criticism and controversies
Revolut made international headlines not only with its stellar business numbers, but a number of controversial issues.
According to a Reuters 2019 article, Revolut had received widespread complaints from customers about their funds being frozen and about poor customer service. The company started to address this issue by hiring around 300 staff in India in an effort to build a global support hub there.
Revolut was rocked from the inside by culture and compliance related criticism, Fintechfutures reported in March 2019. In April 2019, Wired wrote about an allegedly toxic work environment at Revolut and about the company asking job applicants to work for free. The Financial Times published an article in May 2020 - entitled “Revolut is the most hyped fintech in Europe. Can it grow up?” - providing a great summary of how Revolut's overconfidence and aggressive approach have strained relations with politicians, regulators, numerous customers and former employees. In order to calm investors, the company promised to “grow up”.
Competitors
Revolut is both a digital bank and a stockbroker and as such has different competitors in these segments.
Revolut as a digital bank has the following closest competitors:
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Starling, Transferwise, Monzo, Monese
Revolut (more precisely Revolut Trading) as a stock brokerage competes with:
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Passfolio, SoFi Invest, Robinhood, Freetrade
, and other low or zero commission stockbrokers. For more details, read our Revolut alternatives article.
Revolut review
Revolut is a digital bank and a brokerage service provider. We tested their services and summarized our experience and their performance based on our proprietary analysis database in the full Revolut review for 2022. It is a powerful and objective analysis based on 500 data points. Check it out, it will help you crunch the numbers.
Fees
Our detailed fee analysis entitled Revolut fees covers current account and trading fees.
Account opening
For details on the account opening process at Revolut, complete with a step-by-step process including identification, account closing, and unsettled cash info, visit our Revolut account opening article.
Deposit
Deposit and charge up related answers are available in the Revolut deposit article.
Withdrawal
How to withdraw money from Revolut? Find the details in the Revolut withdrawal article.
Trading
How to trade on Revolut? Read our article on trading at Revolut for an in-depth guide on asset buying and selling.
Markets and products
Which markets and financial products are available on the Revolut platform? Dig deeper in the Markets and products section of Trading.
Research
What kind of research and education tools are available on Revolut? We cover the topic in the Research section of Trading.
Buying shares
How to buy company shares using Revolut? A how-to guide in Buying shares.
Cards
Revolut provides a plethora of debit card-related services, which we explored in Cards.
Safety
How safe is Revolut, is it legit, what kind of investor protection does it provide - you’ll find answers to these and related questions in Safety.
Crypto
Crypto trading, conversion, exchanges provided by Revolut in Crypto.
Currencies
What kind of currencies does Revolut support? An up-to-date guide in Currencies.
Services offered
Revolut’s general concept is “One app, all things money.” True to their motto, they provide a range of financial services on a single platform: currency exchange, payment cards, insurance, stock trading, crypto trading, and budgeting.
Currency exchange
This service allows you to exchange funds between any of your accounts.
Exchange fees are reasonably low, a 0.5% fee charged to any exchange above the free allowance set for your plan. Some special currencies conversions and making an exchange while the market is closed may cost more, meaning an extra cost of up to 1-2% compared to the interbank exchange rate.
Go to the Revolut currency exchange page
Payment cards
Revolut offers two types of cards, physical (plastic or metal) and virtual. All cards are debit, provided by either Visa or Mastercard. On selected markets, Revolut offers credit cards as well. The individual card will be automatically assigned to one of the two providers. On Freelance plans, only the account owner can hold cards. Company plans offer cards to other individuals as well.
Go to the Revolut payment cards page
Insurance
The Revolut Group offers the following types of insurance:
- Overseas medical insurance
- Device insurance
- Purchase, refund, and ticket cancellation insurance
You can purchase insurance through the app.
Subscription
The app offers a subscription oversight function where you can track all your subscriptions, direct debits, and recurring payments in one place. It shows you how much money you’re spending on each scheduled payment and with each separate merchant. As Revolut operates on a freemium business model, they call their subscriptions ‘plans’ and most plans have a fee. You can read more about this in Fees.
More info on Revolut subscription options and fees
Stock trading
Revolut Trading Ltd offers a non-advised (execution-only) order transmission service for stocks and fractional shares through the Revolut app. Revolut Trading Ltd is regulated by the FCA.
Go to the Revolut stock trading page
Crypto trading and exchange
At Revolut, you can buy, sell and exchange crypto.
- You can exchange various cryptocurrencies (i.e. Bitcoin, Ether, Stellar and more) into 30+ currencies
- The minimum limit for crypto investing is $1
- Revolut’s crypto trading is not regulated by the FCA and trades are not protected by the FSCS or the Lithuanian Deposit Insurance Scheme
Go to the Revolut crypto trading page
Budget tracking and analytics
The Revolut app allows you track your spending with automatic categorization and analyses to give you predictions that help you plan ahead. You can also set spending limits for each expense category to help you stay on track with your budget. Daily spending limits can also be set up. Daily notifications help you track your spending and the app notifies you when you are getting close to your daily spending limit.
ISA & IRA accounts
Revolut only supports General Investment Accounts for customers over the age of 18.
Savings accounts, like Junior ISAs, Lifetime ISAs, Stock and Shares ISAs, Joint Accounts and SIPP (self-invested personal pension) accounts are not supported at the moment but the company plans to include them in their portolio.
Countries served
Revolut accepts clients only if they are legal residents of the European Economic Area (EEA)*, Australia, Singapore, Switzerland, Japan, and the United States.
*The EEA includes: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
How to use Revolut abroad? Pretty much the same as in every available country. However, price plans might differ among the available regions. For example, for US clients, the Plus plan is not available. On the contrary, US users have a $200,000 crypto allowance meaning they can trade up to $200,000 a month free of charge.
Legal entities
There are different Revolut companies that provide client services depending on the Revolut entity a given client is registered with.
Follow these steps to find out which Revolut entity you are registered with:
- Open the Revolut app
- Click on "dashboard" or your profile icon
- Click on the "Settings Icon"
- Scroll to the bottom of the page
Revolut Payments UAB:
Services provided to customers registered with Revolut Payments UAB directly:
- E-money account services
- Plus, Premium and Metal services
- Overseas Medical Insurance services
- Device Insurance services
- Purchase, Refund, and Ticket Cancellation Insurance
Revolut Bank UAB:
Services provided to customers registered with Revolut Bank UAB:
- Demand Deposit account services
- Credit services
Revolut LTD:
- Cryptocurrency services (for all Revolut customers)
- Commodity (gold) services (for all Revolut customers)
Services provided to customers registered with Revolut LTD directly:
- E-money account services
- Plus, Premium and Metal services
- Cryptocurrency services
- Commodity (gold) services
Revolut Trading LTD:
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Trading services (for all Revolut customers)
Services provided to customers registered with Revolut LTD directly:
- Overseas Medical Insurance services
- Device Insurance services
- Purchase, Refund, and Ticket Cancellation Insurance
Source: Revolut website.
Regulation
Revolut Ltd is an entity authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (with firm reference number 900562) as an Electronic Money Institution under the Electronic Money Regulations 2011.
Revolut Trading Ltd (FRN 832790) is an appointed representative of Resolution Compliance Ltd (FRN 574048), which is authorized and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK.
Revolut Securities Inc. is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC CIK #0001780659) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA CRD#: 304600/SEC#: 8-70365) in the US.
Revolut Bank UAB is regulated by the Lithuanian national bank, the Bank of Lithuania, under authorization code LB000482 for ‘Receipt of deposits and other repayable funds from non-professional participants of the market’ and ‘Engagement in consumer credit provider activity’.
Sources: FCA UK, SEC, FINRA, Bank of Lithuania.
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