Revolut turned a profit in 2021 amid the crypto boom
Fintech giant Revolut has reported its first full year of profit, with delayed accounts showing revenue tripled in 2021 as paid subscriptions and overall usage of the app surged.
The challenger bank posted a pre-tax profit of £39.8 million ($48 million) for the year compared with a loss of £220.7 million in 2021. The London-based business posted revenues of £636.2 million ($767.1 million dollars), three times the £220 million it booked in 2020.
Revolut’s revenue comes from several sources, but overall it was boosted by a more than 50% increase in weekly active retail customers and a 75% increase in paid subscriptions. Meanwhile, the currency and wealth services, which include crypto, were the biggest source of revenue. About 33 percent of Revolut’s 2021 revenue came from its cryptocurrency trading business.
Revolut reportedly faced concerns from its auditor, BDO, which said it had been unable to fully verify £477m of revenue, adding that “the risk of an undetected material misstatement was unacceptably high.”
“We have achieved our first full year of profit and demonstrated that we can accelerate customer growth at scale and increase revenue across all our product lines. In 2021 we received a full banking license 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,” Revolut co-founder and CEO Nik Storonsky said in the release.
For 2022, the company gave a trading update which said it continued to grow at a slower pace, with revenue rising 30 per cent to £850m. As a privately held company, Revolut is not required to share frequent quarterly reports.
Although the first annual profit was driven in part by a boom in crypto, Revolut kept its distance on plans to launch its initial crypto token, which aims to reward customers for their loyalty, as the London-based neobank is currently considering the best time to do it on. .
A spokesperson for Revolut said so Financial news in an interview, where he also shared details about the neobank’s upcoming non-custodial wallet: “We are examining market conditions and considering the best time to launch RevCoin in the coming months.”
The representative cited the contagion from the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which is spreading across the industry, as the reason for the delayed launch of the long-rumored native token.
The failure of Sam Bankman-Fried’s empire, once a $32 billion crypto exchange, has shattered investor confidence in cryptocurrencies. As such, Revolut is trying to gauge the extent of damage it has caused and how it will reshape the industry in the years to come.
