Digital banking firm Revolut has been valued at £24 billion in a fresh round of funding.
The London-based company raised £579 million from Japan’s SoftBank and New York-based Tiger Global Management, which collectively hold less than 5% of its stock.
The valuation puts it ahead of ‘Big Four’ UK bank NatWest, while Revolut is worth 70% of Lloyds’ stock market valuation.
Revolut is now more valuable than London-headquartered Checkout.com and second only to ‘buy now pay later’ Swedish firm Klarna in Europe.
Revolut was founded just six years ago by former Lehman Brothers trader Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, now CEO and CTO respectively. Storonsky, who became the UK’s youngest self-made billionaire last year, now holds $6bn worth of Revolut stock.
However, the company is yet to receive a full UK banking licence. Its first wave of customers were attracted by the promise of fee-free currency exchange, linked to a payment card, and it now also offers current account and cryptocurrency services alongside currency exchange to 16 million customers across 35 countries.
Net losses at the company increased from £107m to £168m last year, but it began to break even in the final two months of the year. CFO Mikko Salovaara said it had been “strongly profitable” in the first quarter of this year.
“[The investment is] an endorsement of our mission to create a global financial super-app that enables customers to manage all their financial needs through a single platform,” said Storonsky.
He also pointed to “investors’ confidence that we can deliver products that raise the bar for customers’ expectations across the whole financial services industry”.
Revolut will use the investment to expand into the Indian and US markets.
Karol Niewiadomski, senior investor for SoftBank, said its “rate of innovation has redefined the role of financial services, placing [Revolut] at the forefront of Europe’s nascent neobanking sector”.
Salovaara said the firm would eventually go public, but it was unlikely to do so this year.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak said on Twitter: “Good news that @RevolutApp has raised $800m and plans to expand even further – creating more jobs here in the UK. We want to see even more great British fintech success stories.”