Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:59, 21 April 2020

A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Misplaced Pages's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. (April 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Revolut Ltd

Company type	Private
Industry	FinTech
Founded	1 July 2015; 9 years ago (2015-07-01)
Founder	Nikolay Storonsky, Vlad Yatsenko
Headquarters	London, England, UK
Key people	Nikolay Storonsky (CEO) Vladyslav Yatsenko (CTO)
Products	current accounts, debit cards, currency exchange, insurance
Services	Peer-to-peer payments, Currency Exchange
Revenue	£58.24 million (2018)
Number of employees	1,596 (2019)
Website	revolut.com

Revolut Ltd is a British financial technology company that offers banking services including GBP and EUR bank accounts, a MasterCard prepaid debit card or a VISA debit card, fee-free currency exchange, stock trading, cryptocurrency exchange and peer-to-peer payments. The Revolut mobile app supports spending and ATM withdrawals in 120 currencies and sending in 29 currencies directly from the app. It also provides customers access to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), and XRP by exchanging to or from 25 fiat currencies.

If a payment is made on week-ends, Revolut adds an extra 0.5% to 2% fees so as to protect against exchange rate fluctuations

The company was founded in London by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. The company originally was based in Level39, a financial technology incubator in Canary Wharf, London.

History

On 26 April 2018, Revolut announced that it had raised a further $250 million in a funding round led by Hong Kong-based DST Global, reaching a total valuation of $1.7 billion and thus becoming a unicorn. DST Global was founded by Yuri Milner, who has been backed by the Kremlin in his previous investments.

In December 2018, Revolut secured a specialised bank licence from European Central Bank, facilitated by the Bank of Lithuania. Having secured a specialised bank licence, Revolut is authorised to accept deposits and offer consumer credits. The main difference between a specialised and a full-range bank is that the former is not authorised to provide investment services. At the same time, an Electronic Money Institution licence was issued by the Bank of Lithuania.

In March 2019, an exposé of the company's employment practices and culture was published by Wired. This found evidence of unpaid work, high staff turnover and employees being ordered to work weekends to meet performance indicators. A more recent article suggests that the company has responded to criticism and Revolut now has higher rating than its peers on Glassdoor.

It was also revealed the company's Chief Financial Officer had quit, following allegations of compliance lapses. This was denied by Revolut in a blog post.

In July 2019 Revolut launched commission-free New York Stock Exchange & NASDAQ stocks trading within its app for customers in its "Metal" plan. Commission free trading has since been made available to all users.

In August 2019, the company announced it was bringing in staff with more experience in traditional banking after critics suggested it was struggling to cope with its rapid growth. The hires included Wolfgang Bardorf, Treasurer and a former executive director at Goldman Sachs and the former global head of liquidity models and methodologies at Deutsche Bank, Philip Doyle, director of financial crime risk who was previously head of financial crime at ClearBank and fraud prevention manager at Visa, and Stefan Wille, deputy CFO who previously served as senior vice-president of finance at N26 and corporate finance manager at Credit Suisse.

As of December 2019, the company claimed to have 10 million users.

In October 2019 it was announced that the company will hire around 3,500 additional staff as it grows into 24 new markets owing to a new global deal with Visa. In October 2019 Revolut launched in Singapore.

Sky News reported in October 2019 that the company was looking to raise $1.5bn and had hired JP Morgan to facilitate this. The fundraise would value Revolut between $5-10bn.

Revolut became the UK's most valuable financial technology startup in February 2020 after a funding round that more than tripled its value. This comes after the company announced it had raised $500 million from a group of investors led by the US fund Technology Crossover Ventures.

Founder

Nikolay Storonsky founded Revolut. He is a British-Russian entrepreneur. He studied for a master's degree in physics at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and during this time became a state champion swimmer. He completed a separate masters in economics at New Economic School in Moscow. Prior to founding Revolut, Storonsky was a trader at Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers. Alongside Vlad Yatsenko, former Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank developer, Storonsky set up Revolut and raised around $3.5 million, saying in an interview with Forbes:

I thought of the business three years ago. I was travelling a lot and wasting hundreds of pounds on foreign transaction fees and exchange rate commissions which just didn’t feel right. As someone with a financial background I knew exactly the rates I should be getting. As a solution, I tried to find a multi-currency card and was later told it wasn’t possible. But I was determined to make it work.

His father Nikolay Mironovich Storonsky is Deputy General Director of Science for Gazprom Promgaz since 2017, and First Deputy General Director for Science Gazprom Promgaz OAO.

Controversies

Revolut, in common with traditional financial institutions, uses algorithms to identify money laundering, fraud and other criminal activity, but unlike the rest of the banking industry, Revolut's algorithms additionally trigger the automated suspension of accounts. Revolut explains that "the system is programmed to temporarily lock an account and place it in a queue, until one of our compliance agents can review the case".

Customers whose accounts are suspended are blocked from contacting Revolut's usual support channel and instead receive automated responses from a chatbot. The Daily Telegraph reported that Revolut suspended an account containing £90,000 for more than two months and that another customer travelled 500 miles from Auvergne in France to Revolut's London offices in an unsuccessful attempt to recover £15,000 in an account that Revolut had frozen. In a further case reported by The Times, Revolut suspended and subsequently closed a business account containing €300,000 belonging to Priorité Energie, which "helps low-income families in Paris to insulate their homes under a government initiative", preventing the company from paying its staff.

References

1. "Revolut company profile". AngelList. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
2. "Revolut revenue". Craft. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
3. "Revolut Company Profile". Craft. Retrieved December 9, 2019.
4. Dillet, Romain (2015-07-20). "Revolut Raises $2.3 Million For Its Mobile Foreign Exchange Service". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-01-11.
5. Kyburz, Kevin (2018-01-29). "Banking App for Travelers – Revolut Converts Currencies Minus the Fees!". Techgarage. Retrieved 2018-02-11.
6. https://www.revolut.com/help/getting-started/exchanging-currencies/what-foreign-exchange-rate-will-i-get
7. Dan, Enriques (2018-04-29). "Are You Ready To Give Fintech A Try?". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-06-12.
8. Munford, Monty (2018-04-26). "Revolut launches current accounts and a chatbot". Forbes. Retrieved 2018-04-26.
9. Drucker, Jesse (2017-11-05). "Kremlin Cash Behind Billionaire's Twitter and Facebook Investments". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-01-31.
10. "Revolut granted specialised bank and electronic money institution licences". Bank Of Lithuania. 2018-12-13. Retrieved 2018-12-13.
11. Megaw, Nicholas (2018-12-13). "Lithuania licence lets Revolut launch banking products". Financial Times. Retrieved 2018-12-13.
12. Mellino, Emiliano (2019-02-28). "Revolut insiders reveal the human cost of a fintech unicorn's wild rise". Wired. Retrieved 2019-03-01.
13. "Digital banks Monzo, Revolut, Starling and N26 compared". Sifted. Retrieved 2019-12-20.
14. Russell, Joe. "Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-03-01.
15. "Let me set the record straight". Revolut Blog. 2019-03-01. Retrieved 2019-10-14.
16. "Subscribe to read". Financial Times. Retrieved 2019-08-09. {{cite web}}: Cite uses generic title (help)
17. "Should you trade stocks for free with Revolut?". Which? News. Retrieved 2019-10-14.
18. "Revolut bolsters senior team with banking executives". FT. 2019-08-23. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
19. Reuters. 2019-09-30 https://twitter.com/ChadWestTweets/status/1205604753209774086. Retrieved 2019-10-14. {{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)
20. Short, Eva (2019-09-30). "New deal with Visa will see Revolut hire thousands, expand into 24 markets". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 2019-10-07.
21. "Revolut opens for business in Singapore". City A.M. Retrieved 24 October 2019.
22. "Revolut targets $1.5bn to join fintech elite". Sky News. Retrieved 2019-10-14.
23. correspondent, Kalyeena Makortoff Banking (2020-02-25). "Digital bank Revolut becomes UK's most valuable fintech startup". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-02-25. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)
24. "Revolut raises $ 500 million for a $ 5.5 billion company valuation". Zinios. Retrieved February 27, 2020.
25. Burroughs, Callum. "UK fintech unicorn Revolut forced to deny links to Russia". Business Insider. Retrieved 2019-04-29.
26. Nicolle, Emily (2019-02-21). "Revolut pushes ministers for fast-track tech visas". www.cityam.com. Retrieved 2019-04-29.
27. Smith, Edwin (2018-04-10). "Revolut boss Nikolay Storonsky: 'I've never seen a big bank do something cool – if they did, we wouldn't exist'". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2019-04-29.
28. Kadhim Shubber (2018-02-18). "Revolut's Nikolay Storonsky on long hours and high staff turnover". Financial Times. Retrieved 2018-03-13.
29. Oscar Williams-Grut (2017-10-13). "Our culture is 'about getting s**t done': The Revolut founder on why his people work 12-13 hours a day". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-03-13.
30. ^ "Revolut's Nikolay Storonsky on long hours and high staff turnover". Financial Times. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
31. "Revolut Deck". SlideShare. 2015-01-14. Retrieved 2016-09-11.
32. ^ Salter, Philip. "London Fintech Entrepreneur Talking About A Revolution". Forbes.
33. BNS. "LRT: отец главы Revolut Сторонского работает в "Газпроме"". DELFI. Retrieved 2019-03-27.
34. Nikolay Mironovich Storonsky (Bloomberg info)
35. Braileanu, Rob. "Why has my account been locked and how to regain access?". Revolut. Revolut Ltd. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
36. Marks, Oliver (17 January 2019). "Revolut's clumsy automated bank compliance results in frozen accounts and lack of customer service". ZDNet. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
37. Barker, Sam (21 January 2020). "Revolut customers locked out of accounts 'for weeks'". The Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
38. Palmer, Kate (8 February 2020). "Monzo and Revolut: customer complaints are mounting at digital banks". The Times. The Times. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
39. Hunt, Marianna (25 January 2000). "Revolut could face lawsuit from customers locked out of their accounts". The Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
40. Hunt, Marianna (24 January 2020). "Ex-UCL lecturer forced to travel to London from France in attempts to unblock digital bank account". The Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 27 February 2020.
41. Dunkley, Emma (23 February 2020). "Nikolay Storonsky's Revolut freezes accounts in money-laundering bungle". The Times. The Times. Retrieved 23 February 2020.

External links

• Official website

• Foreign exchange companies
• Digital currency exchanges
• Financial services companies of the United Kingdom