Losses at the UK challenger, Starling Bank, doubled to £52 million in 2019 as the company hired hundreds of employees and focused on attracting new customers, according to fintechfutures.com.
The banking start-up brought in revenues of £14.2 million, a steep increase from the previous year’s revenues of £750,000.
Starling Bank’s growth targets for 2020 have been lowered, the company says, and Boden writes that the company’s plans to expand to Ireland would be “temporarily put on ice” during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
The company has plans to expand internationally in 2021. It hopes to launch in Ireland, the Netherlands, France and Germany.
Starling Bank “has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future,” the report says. This is in contrast to Monzo’s recent annual report in which the business warned of “material uncertainties” affecting its ability to continue to operate.
Monzo said last week that its losses rose to £113.8 million from £47.1 million while revenues increased to £67.2 million from £19.7 million.
Atom Bank, the United Kingdom (UK) headquartered digital bank was not only the first App only based bank in the UK but also the first online only bank to be granted a full UK regulatory license. The Atom FY 2019 earnings disclose another challenging year for the UK’s first digital bank. Atom Bank FY 2019 losses rise by 52% to £80.2m for the 12 months to end March from £52.6m, according to verdict.co.uk.
Meanwhile losses at digital banking start-up Revolut more than triple to £106.5m in 2019, from £32.9m in 2018, as the business continued to expand internationally and hired nearly 2,000 new employees, according to Yahoo Finance UK.
Revenue grew slower than losses, rising 180% to £162.7m. The majority of revenue come from interchange fees charged when customers spend on its cards abroad or at home. Revolut earned £102.6m on these tiny fees, which are charge on each transaction. 99% of revenue came from the UK.
Revolut saw customer numbers surge from 3.5 million to 10 million last year and now has around 13 million users globally. The company also has 220,000 business customers. Customers held £2.2bn on its cards by the end of 2019, up from £1bn at the end of 2018.
“While we still have some way to go, we are pleased with our progress in 2019,” founder and chief executive Nikolay Storonsky said in an emailed statement.
“We tripled our revenues, increased retail customers from 3.5 million to 10 million, increased daily active customers by 231% and the number of paying customers grew by 139%.”
Unlike rival Monzo, Revolut’s accounts do not include a warning about the company’s future. Revolut raised $500m in February and a further $80m in June.
“As a result, the group was very well capitalised entering the COVID-19 pandemic,” directors wrote in the accounts. The board said Revolut has a “comfortable level of headroom above its regulatory capital and liquidity requirements.”
“Despite the current economic challenges, we remain focused on our goal of moving towards profitability,” Storonsky said.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
