Revolut Now Have 500,000 Irish Customers. Update: 1m customers now.

Emmm - I'm not sure that can be fully accurate. If Revolut holds client money at Barclays, it will be seen as a single customer and therefore each underlying Revolut customer would not be covered by the UK scheme - only Revolut up to the max for a single person. Unless they open individual accounts for each customer in that customers name (or identifying each customer) which I doubt if I'm honest.
I lifted this from the Revolut website, looks like there is cover under the UK FCA scheme : https://community.revolut.com/t/now...ng-we-use-it-as-our-primary-bank-account/4427
 
We live in a funny world, look at Uber, WeWork, Peloton they are all loss making but yet they are used by millions. The aim of the game seems to be get as many users as possible and then work on profitability.

Sounds like 1999 all over again. I hope history isn’t going to repeat itself.

Someone mentioned that Revolut don’t treat their employees well.
Uber has caused misery in the third world.
Try telling the residents of central Barcelona that Air BnB’s is about helping the common person with their mortgage payment and you’ll get a different message.
 
Problem for Revolut is that their turnover is small, only £58m last year out of a customer base they claim is in excess of 7 million. Half of those are not using the services even once a month, so they have failed to monetise their customer base. I wonder how many people are using it purely when travelling?
 
I lifted this from the Revolut website, looks like there is cover under the UK FCA scheme : https://community.revolut.com/t/now...ng-we-use-it-as-our-primary-bank-account/4427
That's misleading. Individual Revolut deposits are not subject to UK deposit insurance. Revolut has been granted a banking licence in Lithuania which has not yet come into effect. If and when it does funds up to €100,000 will formally be covered by the Lithuanian deposit insurance scheme. However, that raises the question of how reliable that scheme would be if there was a multi-bank collapse in that country, which has attracted a large number of fintech companies. Lithuania is very small and still relatively poor. In time a European deposit insurance scheme might come into being but that still seems a long way off.
 
I lifted this from the Revolut website, looks like there is cover under the UK FCA scheme : https://community.revolut.com/t/now...ng-we-use-it-as-our-primary-bank-account/4427

As mentioned, individual "accounts" on Revolut are not covered by the UK insurance scheme - they make that clear in the FAQ's. What they say is that they hold all client cash at an account at Barclays clearly designated as client money and therefore not subject to creditors of Revolut in a case of bankruptcy - which is valid. The account at Barclays would be covered under the UK scheme but that would be a single account with the relevant limit - not per Revolut customer

Revolut may have a banking license somewhere but it is not utilising it according to the website - just because they have a banking license somewhere in their legal structure doesn't mean they are acting as a bank. The website is clear that they are not operating "accounts" and are not a deposit taking institution (aka "a bank") and that they are operating as a money transfer agent
 
Please re-read what I wrote. The banking licence has been issued but it's not yet operational,

I spent a few minutes on the Bank of Lithuania website and it does not seem to make a distinction between licenses that are operational and those that aren't. It would be nice if you could clarify this.

hence deposits are not yet insured.

I made no claims about this.
 
Sounds like 1999 all over again. I hope history isn’t going to repeat itself.

I've been thinking that more and more recently. Except the numbers are much bigger. Wework, a loss making business going from a valuation of $45b to almost going bust. Uber never turning a profit, neither does Tesla. Buying stock in a tech IPO is madness unless you flip it that day. Chances are it's going to sink. Google bought Fitbit recently but it had bombed since it's IPO. GoPro was another disaster.
 
I spent a few minutes on the Bank of Lithuania website and it does not seem to make a distinction between licenses that are operational and those that aren't. It would be nice if you could clarify this.



I made no claims about this.
The "not yet operational" was my own wording which might differ from Lithuanian legal phrasing. It simply was a logical deduction: if operating with a banking licence means the institution is covered by the deposit insurance scheme and if for Revolut that scheme is not yet in effect, this would seem to imply that its banking licence is not yet fully operational (or "implemented" or "in force" or whichever wording you prefer). I'm afraid I'm not aware of the intricacies surrounding this.
 
From my perspective, I have little on deposit with Revolut, but am not particularly happy they haven't got an operational licence. I tend to rely on my N26 German account in terms of security, and as I live part of the year abroad, I find it useful and simple. I continue to use main stream banks, including in my home abroad for the security they provide, and I never have all my eggs in one basket. Prudence is the watchword for me. I use Revolut for convenience, and it does what it says on the tin.
 
I am genuinely puzzled by this.

Revolut's blog from a year ago says that:

If you choose to open a full current account with Revolut Bank in the future, any funds you deposit will be protected up to €100,000 under the European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS).

It's worth pointing out that this scheme is not currently in place, so your current funds with Revolut remain safeguarded in accounts with a tier one UK bank, as per our obligations under the e-money regulations.

But the Bank of Lithuania website doesn't seem to have any opt-out from its DGS for deposit-taking instiutions of which Revolut is one:

The aim of deposit insurance is to ensure protection of deposits in case of financial institution insolvency, thus contributing to the stability of the financial market and enhancing the public’s trust in financial institutions. In Lithuania, deposits are insured in the amount of up to EUR 100 thousand, when they are held with a bank, bank branch or credit union.

There are two licensed entities in fact, Revolut Bank UAB which is authorised to take deposits, and Revolut Payments UAB which has a to issue e-money, execute transactions, etc, but not to take deposits.

Is Revolut Bank Payments UAB the one you open an account with? As it is not strictly speaking a deposit-taking insitution it presumably wouldn't be covered by a DGS.
 
It might also be worth getting their definition of what a deposit is - is it money held anywhere in your Revolut Account, or only in a "vault" for example ?
 
I am genuinely puzzled by this.

There are two licensed entities in fact, Revolut Bank UAB which is authorised to take deposits, and Revolut Payments UAB which has a to issue e-money, execute transactions, etc, but not to take deposits.

Is Revolut Bank Payments UAB the one you open an account with? As it is not strictly speaking a deposit-taking insitution it presumably wouldn't be covered by a DGS.

Correct. It has two licenses (I assume two different legal entities). They are not using their banking license and are not acting as a bank (they say this explicitly - not just "strictly speaking" - not at all in any way). Therefore customers benefit from the UK client asset rules requiring firms to segregate client assets from their own in case of bankruptcy but do not benefit from the insurance scheme

It might also be worth getting their definition of what a deposit is - is it money held anywhere in your Revolut Account, or only in a "vault" for example ?

Their definition is irrelevant. A deposit is when a customer lodges any cash with a bank - irrespective of the account type or name. You become a creditor of the bank and are on the bank's balance sheet as a liability (to the bank). If Revolut were acting in the capacity of a bank, any money you had with them in any form would be a "deposit".

But this is not what they are doing. They have opened accounts with a Bank and when you give money to Revolut they are lodging into a "client account" at Barclays. Barclays are the deposit taking institution and Revolut are acting as an agent / intermediary. You are not a liability for Revolut, but the combined client account balance is a liability for Barclays
 
I am not sure that the banks make much if any profit on current accounts.

They do make it on FX transactions, so I suppose Revolut might affect them there a bit.

But they make most of their money on lending, and mortgages in particular.

Isn't Revolut hugely loss making? I don't know much about their business model, but it does not look sustainable to me.

Brendan
You have to have a few thousand in your current acc to avoid charges, if you multiply this amount by the number of customer there s a tidy amount for them to invest
 
You have to have a few thousand in your current acc to avoid charges, if you multiply this amount by the number of customer there s a tidy amount for them to invest

How exactly do you think they make money on a load of deposits in EUR in the current environment.

Revolut aren't a Bank, so every €1 a client places with them has to be deposited in a client account with a bank - which will be earning less than nothing probably (if they are avoiding paying negative interest on that balance I'd be surprised). So they aren't making money from client deposits at the moment.

Even a bank struggles to make anything on EUR client balances. While a bank can use deposits as part of the general balance sheet, they still have to maintain about 10% of the value of client balances in cash - and they will be paying 40 or 50 bps on that. They are also restricted on types of other assets they can hold - so a portion of assets will be in bonds (again negative rates). Where they make their money is on what can be lent out; an avenue Revolut don't have - or at least they can't include client deposits in the calculation of what they could lend out. They could only lend out of their own capital which I suspect is pretty small.

They have other products in the pipeline which, in theory they could turn into revenue streams - but again they might run into the problem outlined on other threads... dropping transaction prices to near zero to gain market share based on the fact that variable costs on electronic activity is low doesn't address the overhead and structural cost to run a business of scale. So I'm not sure that the market share makes up for the low unit cost.
 
irish banks are going to get a good spanking sooner rather then later. my son had a savings account with Ulster bank for years. he turned 18 recently and wanted a debit card. would not deal with him at the branch. told him to do it online. now the usual show us a bill in your name to prove your address. what 18 year old has house hold bills in their name. he suggested a Ulster bank statement they sent him. no, that wont do. for the love of god. I downloaded the revolut app myself to check it out. the next day I was able to use my phone to pay for my coffee. look Ulster bank, it is not that hard.
 
Hello,

While I agree with the point that your making, let's not forget that we are comparing apples and oranges here, when we compare Revolut to "land based banks".

There are lots of things that our traditional banks can learn (and copy) from the likes of Revolut, but they'll never be the same.
 
Hello,

While I agree with the point that your making, let's not forget that we are comparing apples and oranges here, when we compare Revolut to "land based banks".

There are lots of things that our traditional banks can learn (and copy) from the likes of Revolut, but they'll never be the same.

@bigjoe_dub

Ulster Bank is licenced as a bank in Ireland with all of the regulatory obligations that entails. They are legally obliged to satisfy themselves that your son lives at your address before they give him an account.

Revolut is strictly speaking not providing full banking services but is instead licensed for "Execution of payment transactions, including transfers of funds on a payment account with the payment service provider of the payment service user or with another payment service provider: execution of direct debits, including one-off direct debits, execution of payment transactions through a payment card or a similar device and/or execution of credit transfers, including standing orders "

Presumably their customer onboarding obligations in Lithuania for this are much more relaxed than they are for a full bank in Ireland.


It's not unlikely that there will be some kind of event for Revolut or N26 where customers will lose access to their deposits for a period of time. They are simply growing too fast to deal with risk on multiple fronts: infrastructure, regulation, financial crime, etc.
 
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