Revolut takes a hit as it rolls out new products

FinTech darling, Revolut, incurred £14.8 million in total losses after tax during 2017, at a 52% increase from the previous year.

On the plus side, its 2017 revenues hit £12.8 million from £2.4 million in 2016, as the London-based venture launched several revenue-generating products such as cryptocurrency trading and premium accounts. Revolut now has almost three million registered users and intends to launch in the US by early 2019. Read this revolut review.

With Brexit in mind, it has also applied for a second e-money licence in Luxembourg, in addition to its 2017 application for a full banking licence in Lithuania. It currently operates under an e-money licence in the UK, through which it passports its services to other European countries.

Boo to Big Tech

In June, Revolut, hit out at a cryptocurrency advertising clampdown by Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft.

The tech giants claimed that the ban tackled the issue of consumers falling prey to fraudulent or misleading ads on cryptocurrency speculation. But Revolut’s Head of Mobile, Ed Cooper, argued: “Unfortunately, the fact that this ban is a blanket ban will mean that legitimate cryptocurrency businesses which provide valuable services to users will be unfairly caught in the crossfire.”

“It would seem heavy handed for example to put a blanket ban on all ads for job postings, anti-virus software or charities, just because ads for these products and service are also sometimes used as an entry point by scammers to target consumers,” he added. “Hopefully moving forward, a more balanced approach can be applied to both keep consumers safe, but also allow legitimate businesses to advertise their services and add value.”

In May, Coin Rivet reported that Revolut, which last year became the first banking app to let customers invest in Bitcoin, along with Litecoin and Ethereum, was also throwing Ripple (XRP) and Bitcoin Cash into the mix.

It said that “hundreds of thousands” of its customers had invested in virtual currencies since the service was launched in December. Vlad Yatsenko, Co-founder and CTO, Revolut, commented: “We’ve been asking the Revolut community which cryptocurrencies they would like to see next, and the demand for both XRP and Bitcoin Cash has been absolutely overwhelming. After months of negotiation and development work, we’re incredibly excited to offer exposure to these two digital currencies to the UK market.”

Also this year, it has rolled out Vaults which allows clients to round up their card transactions to the nearest whole number and convert all their spare change into cryptocurrencies. More than 50,000 have so far signed up. Yatsenko said: “We launched this world first feature in order to offer frictionless exposure of cryptocurrencies to the mainstream population. The idea of exchanges, private keys and cold storage is a complete turn off for some people, so we wanted to offer a simple way for consumers to get exposure in this area.”