Revolut

Revolut Ltd is a British financial technology company headquartered in London, United Kingdom that offers banking services. It was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko.

Revolut Ltd
Private
IndustryFinTech
Founded1 July 2015 (2015-07-01)[1]
FounderNikolay Storonsky
Vlad Yatsenko
HeadquartersLondon, England, UK
Key people
Nikolay Storonsky
(CEO)
Vladyslav Yatsenko
(CTO)
Productscurrent accounts, debit cards, stock trading, currency exchange, foreign exchange, insurance
ServicesPeer-to-peer payments, Currency Exchange
Revenue £58.24 million (2018)[2]
Number of employees
1,596[3] (2019)
Websiterevolut.com

History

Revolut was founded on 1 July 2015[1] by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. The company was originally based in Level39, a financial technology incubator in Canary Wharf, London.[4]

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 $1.8 billion and thus becoming a unicorn.[5] DST Global was founded by Yuri Milner, who has been backed by the Kremlin in his previous investments.[6]

In December 2018, Revolut secured a specialised bank licence from European Central Bank, facilitated by the Bank of Lithuania, authorising it to accept deposits and offer consumer credits, but not to provide investment services. At the same time, an Electronic Money Institution licence was also issued by the Bank of Lithuania.[7][8]

In March 2019, the company's chief financial officer Peter Higgins resigned. TechCrunch reported that he had quit following allegations of compliance lapses,[9] however Revolut denied that he had left for these reasons.[10]

In July 2019, Revolut launched commission-free stock trading in New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, initially for customers in its Metal plan.[11] This was subsequently made available to all users.[12]

In August 2019, the company announced several hires with experience in traditional banking, including Wolfgang Bardorf, formerly executive director at Goldman Sachs and the global head of liquidity models and methodologies at Deutsche Bank, Philip Doyle, previously head of financial crime at ClearBank and fraud prevention manager at Visa, and Stefan Wille, previously senior vice-president of finance at N26 and corporate finance manager at Credit Suisse.[13]

In October 2019, the company announced a global deal with Visa, following which it would expand into 24 new markets and hire around 3,500 additional staff.[14]

In February 2020, Revolut completed a funding round that more than tripled its value, valuing the company at £4.2 billion and becoming the United Kingdom's most valuable financial technology startup.[15]

Founder

Nikolay Storonsky is the founder and CEO of Revolut. He is a British-Russian entrepreneur.[16][17][18][19][20] 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.[21] He completed a separate masters in economics at New Economic School in Moscow.[21] Prior to founding Revolut, Storonsky was a trader at Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers.[22] Alongside Vlad Yatsenko, former Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank developer, Storonsky set up Revolut and raised around $3.5 million,[23] 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.[23]

His father Nikolay Mironovich Storonsky[24] is Deputy General Director of Science for Gazprom Promgaz since 2017, and First Deputy General Director for Science Gazprom Promgaz OAO.[25]

Services

Revolut offers banking services including GBP and EUR bank accounts, debit cards, fee-free currency exchange, stock trading, cryptocurrency exchange and peer-to-peer payments.[26] Revolut's 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, Ethereum, Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and XRP by exchanging with 25 fiat currencies.[27]

If a payment is made at weekends, Revolut adds an extra 0.5% to 2% fees so as to protect against exchange rate fluctuations.[28]

Controversies

Automated suspension of accounts

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".[29]

It is increasingly reported that Revolut's algorithms suspend a growing number of accounts in error for weeks or months at a time because Revolut does not have sufficient compliance agents to review the automated suspensions, and that while Revolut pays no interest on the large suspended balances, Revolut can earn interest on the funds in wholesale money markets. Customers whose accounts are suspended are blocked from contacting Revolut's usual support channel and instead receive automated responses from a chatbot.[30][31][32] The Daily Telegraph reported that Revolut suspended an account containing £90,000 for more than two months[33] 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 similarly frozen without any justification being given.[34] 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.[35] Revolut's public internet forums contain an increasingly large number of complaints by customers about locked accounts and a lack of response from Revolut's support team, with many customers in each thread reporting a total loss of access to their money.[36][37][38][39][40][41][42]

Employment practices

In March 2019, Wired published an exposé of the company's employment practices and work culture. This found evidence of unpaid work, high staff turnover and employees being ordered to work weekends to meet performance indicators.[43] A later article in December 2019 by Sifted noted that Revolut had a higher rating than its peers on Glassdoor.[44]

In June 2020, Wired published a further exposé of Revolut's dismissal of employees during the COVID-19 pandemic, in which employees, particularly in Kraków, were given the choice of being terminated for underperformance or a mutual agreement to leave the company voluntarily, in order to reduce the headline number of 62 redundancies announced by Revolut. The report explained that "Current and former Revolut employees say staff were coerced into accepting terminations, even though the company had no legal grounds to fire them" and that employees in Porto were pressured into agreeing to a salary sacrifice scheme in order to keep their jobs.[45] According to Wired, in a message sent to the 495-strong customer support team on Slack shortly after the salary sacrifice scheme was announced, head of support Inna Grynova urged them to participate:

“So far, almost 20 per cent of our employees globally have submitted their sacrifices. In Support we’ve gathered only 44 submitions [sic] (out of 495 employees) which is a very small number. Our goal is to use SSS as an alternative to the need of employees redundancy and other cost cuts. So the success of SSS depends on all of us. If it won’t be enough, unfortunately we would need to go for the other steps, which we’ll try to avoid. The positive impact of SSS can be achieved only when we work together.”

gollark: I don't know.
gollark: I have no idea, I used the AUR package.
gollark: We have it linked to here.
gollark: An IRC network.
gollark: And no, they cannot have custom CSS.

References
  1. "Revolut company profile". AngelList. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  2. "Revolut revenue". Craft. Retrieved 15 November 2019.
  3. "Revolut Company Profile". Craft. Retrieved 9 December 2019.
  4. Dan, Enriques (29 April 2018). "Are You Ready To Give Fintech A Try?". Forbes. Retrieved 12 June 2018.
  5. Munford, Monty (26 April 2018). "Revolut launches current accounts and a chatbot". Forbes. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  6. Drucker, Jesse (5 November 2017). "Kremlin Cash Behind Billionaire's Twitter and Facebook Investments". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 31 January 2019.
  7. "Revolut granted specialised bank and electronic money institution licences". Bank Of Lithuania. 13 December 2018. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  8. Megaw, Nicholas (13 December 2018). "Lithuania licence lets Revolut launch banking products". Financial Times. Retrieved 13 December 2018.
  9. Russell, Joe. "Revolut CFO resigns following money laundering controversy". TechCrunch. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  10. "Let me set the record straight". Revolut Blog. 1 March 2019. Retrieved 14 October 2019.
  11. "Subscribe to read". Financial Times. Retrieved 9 August 2019.
  12. "Should you trade stocks for free with Revolut?". Which? News. Retrieved 14 October 2019.
  13. "Revolut bolsters senior team with banking executives". FT. 23 August 2019. Retrieved 16 November 2019.
  14. Short, Eva (30 September 2019). "New deal with Visa will see Revolut hire thousands, expand into 24 markets". Silicon Republic. Retrieved 7 October 2019.
  15. correspondent, Kalyeena Makortoff Banking (25 February 2020). "Digital bank Revolut becomes UK's most valuable fintech startup". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 25 February 2020.
  16. Burroughs, Callum. "UK fintech unicorn Revolut forced to deny links to Russia". Business Insider. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
  17. Nicolle, Emily (21 February 2019). "Revolut pushes ministers for fast-track tech visas". www.cityam.com. Retrieved 29 April 2019.
  18. Smith, Edwin (10 April 2018). "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 29 April 2019.
  19. Kadhim Shubber (18 February 2018). "Revolut's Nikolay Storonsky on long hours and high staff turnover". Financial Times. Retrieved 13 March 2018.
  20. Oscar Williams-Grut (13 October 2017). "Our culture is 'about getting s**t done': The Revolut founder on why his people work 12-13 hours a day". Business Insider. Retrieved 13 March 2018.
  21. "Revolut's Nikolay Storonsky on long hours and high staff turnover". Financial Times. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  22. "Revolut Deck". SlideShare. 14 January 2015. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
  23. Salter, Philip. "London Fintech Entrepreneur Talking About A Revolution". Forbes.
  24. BNS. "LRT: отец главы Revolut Сторонского работает в "Газпроме"". DELFI. Retrieved 27 March 2019.
  25. Nikolay Mironovich Storonsky (Bloomberg info)
  26. Dillet, Romain (20 July 2015). "Revolut Raises $2.3 Million For Its Mobile Foreign Exchange Service". TechCrunch. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  27. Kyburz, Kevin (29 January 2018). "Banking App for Travelers – Revolut Converts Currencies Minus the Fees!". Techgarage. Retrieved 11 February 2018.
  28. "What foreign exchange rate will I get? | Revolut Help Centre". www.revolut.com.
  29. Braileanu, Rob. "Why has my account been locked and how to regain access?". Revolut. Revolut Ltd. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
  30. 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.
  31. Barker, Sam (21 January 2020). "Revolut customers locked out of accounts 'for weeks'". The Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
  32. Palmer, Kate (8 February 2020). "Monzo and Revolut: customer complaints are mounting at digital banks". The Times. The Times. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
  33. 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.
  34. 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.
  35. Dunkley, Emma (23 February 2020). "Nikolay Storonsky's Revolut freezes accounts in money-laundering bungle". The Times. The Times. Retrieved 23 February 2020.
  36. "Account locked - support chat doesn't work". Revolut Community. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  37. "Blocked Account - Unhelpful Customer Service". Revolut Community. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  38. "Account blocked for no reason?". Revolut Community. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  39. "My accout has been locked and i cant access my money!". Revolut Community. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  40. "Locked account". Revolut Community. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  41. "Account blocked from my revolut account". Revolut Community. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  42. "COVID 19 sob more than 13k Portfolio - Revolut Locked Account Since 13/03/2020 due funds verification - Sharing My User Experience! [UNSOLVED]". Revolut Community. Retrieved 21 May 2020.
  43. Mellino, Emiliano (28 February 2019). "Revolut insiders reveal the human cost of a fintech unicorn's wild rise". Wired. Retrieved 1 March 2019.
  44. "Digital banks Monzo, Revolut, Starling and N26 compared". Sifted. Retrieved 20 December 2019.
  45. Emiliano, Mellino (4 June 2020). "Revolut staff claim they've been told to quit their jobs or be fired". Wired. Condé Nast Publications. Retrieved 5 June 2020.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.