Monetisation · Product case study · United Kingdom
Revolut: Never live on one fee.
Revolut is a London fintech with 68 million customers. It started by undercutting banks on foreign exchange. This case study explains what Revolut is, how it grew from that single fee into eleven separate income lines, and why becoming a bank in its home market took about five years.
Take a line away ↓$6.0bn
Revenue, up 46% on 2024
- PrProfit before tax38% margin$2.3bn
- CuRetail customers16 million added in the year68.3m
- BaCustomer balancesup 66%$67.5bn
- BuBusiness customersup 33%767,000
Independent educational analysis by PMcademy. Figures are from Revolut’s published 2025 results or the other sources listed at the end. Revolut reports in pounds and gives US dollar figures for context; this page uses the dollar figures. The practice scenario is fictional. No affiliation or endorsement is implied.
What Revolut is
One app that tries to be everything a person does with money: an account, a card, currency exchange, savings, shares, crypto and, increasingly, credit. It runs as a licensed bank in more than 30 of its 40 markets.
- $6.0bn+46%
- revenue in 2025
- $2.3bn+57%
- profit before tax
- 5 years
- of net profit in a row
A survey by the investor a16z suggests about one in five working-age adults in Europe now uses it. The company’s own target is 100 million customers by the middle of 2027.
It began with one fee
Revolut started with a single, sharp complaint. Europeans who travelled or sent money abroad were paying their banks fees of around 5% and putting up with delays. Revolut was built to take that pain away. a16z describes the first version as a single product for a narrow group, nice to have rather than essential.
The cheap exchange rate was a way in, not the business. Once the app was on the phone, every new product had a customer waiting. Gojek grew the same way from motorcycle rides, and Moniepoint from a card reader.
No line can sink the company
Here are Revolut’s five largest income lines for 2025, with 2024 beneath each. Press a line to take it away and see what is left.
Income by line, 2025
2025 2024
Figures from Revolut’s 2025 results, in US dollars. The five lines do not add up to total revenue; the rest is other income. The “take it away” test is a teaching exercise, not a forecast.
This is the idea worth copying. Fees make up 76% of revenue and interest just under 22%, so a fall in interest rates hurts without being fatal. No single country brings in more than a quarter of fee revenue. Subscriptions, the fastest-growing line at 67%, turn occasional users into people who pay every month. See pricing and packaging for how plans like that are designed.
Customers who bring customers
Revolut added 16 million retail customers in 2025. More than 63% of them, by the company’s count, arrived through word of mouth or a referral, not an advert.
That matters for the income mix. A customer who costs little to win can be profitable on a small card fee, and becomes far more valuable with each product they add. a16z notes that customers who treat Revolut as their main account grew 45% in the year, faster than customers overall. Growth that feeds itself is a loop, not a funnel.
The slow part: becoming a bank at home
Software can ship every week. Permission cannot. Revolut’s UK licence is the clearest example of a roadmap item no team could speed up.
- AppliesRevolut applies for a UK banking licence.
- Licence, with restrictionsA “mobilisation” stage with a cap on deposits. tech.eu notes this stage usually lasts around 12 months.
- Restrictions liftedAfter 20 months. Deposits gain statutory protection, and 13 million UK customers begin to move across in batches.
Even then the launch is gradual. New customers were let in a few at a time, and existing ones get at least two months’ notice before they move. The licence opens the door to lending, which the company’s UK chief describes as part of a broader set of products to come.
What is still small: lending
Traditional banks earn most of their money by lending out deposits. Revolut barely does. It held $67.5 billion of customer balances at the end of 2025 and had lent $2.9 billion. a16z puts its loan-to-deposit ratio at about 6%.
Customer lending against customer balances, end of 2025
Loans grew 120% in the year and are still a sliver of the money held.
You can read that two ways. It is the biggest untapped line in the business. It is also the riskiest: a card fee cannot default, a loan can. The company says 90% of its assets sit in cash and similar holdings, which is cautious and leaves income on the table. A product manager would want a counter-metric on any plan to grow it.
What to take from Revolut
Start narrow, with a fee people already hate
Revolut’s first job was to beat the bank’s charge for changing currency. One sharp, measurable saving is enough to earn a place on a phone.
Make each product pay its own way
Eleven lines above £100 million means no feature is a free extra. Know how every product earns before you build the next.
Watch your biggest dependency
No line above 22% and no country above 25% is a design choice. Put your own concentration on one page and look at it.
Trust moves slower than software
The app changes all the time. The licence took about five years. In regulated markets, plan the slow path alongside the fast one.
Your turn: the second income line
Your fictional budgeting app has two million users and earns only from card fees. A change in card fee rules could halve that income. You can build one new line this year. Pick one, then open it to see the trade-off.
A paid plan with perks
Revolut’s fastest-growing line in 2025: subscriptions rose 67%. Income becomes monthly and predictable. It only works if the perks are things your best customers already pay for elsewhere, so find those first.
Interest on the balances customers hold
Almost no product work, and it earned Revolut $1.3 billion. It also rises and falls with interest rates you do not control, and it needs customers to trust you with real money.
Lending to your existing customers
The largest prize in banking, and still small at Revolut. It needs a licence, capital and a model of who repays. It is the slowest of the three, so start the paperwork long before you need the income.
Write the choice up with the decision memo template, and test demand first with an experiment that can fail.
Questions people ask about Revolut
What is Revolut?
Revolut is a financial app based in London. It offers accounts, cards, currency exchange, savings, share and crypto trading, paid subscription plans and business accounts. At the end of 2025 it had 68.3 million retail customers and 767,000 business customers.
How does Revolut make money?
From many lines at once. In 2025 it reported $1.3 billion from card payments, $1.3 billion of interest income, $936 million from subscriptions, $876 million from wealth products and $800 million from foreign exchange, within total revenue of $6.0 billion. Eleven product lines each earned more than about £100 million.
Is Revolut profitable?
Yes. It reported profit before tax of $2.3 billion (£1.7 billion) for 2025, up 57%, and net profit of $1.7 billion. The company says 2025 was its fifth year of net profit in a row.
Is Revolut a bank in the UK?
It is becoming one. Revolut applied for a UK banking licence in 2021, received one with restrictions in July 2024, and had the restrictions lifted on 11 March 2026. It is moving its 13 million UK customers to the new bank in stages over several months.
Who runs Revolut?
Nik Storonsky is the co-founder and chief executive.
How much is Revolut worth?
tech.eu reported a valuation of $75 billion in March 2026. Revolut is a private company, so the figure comes from investment rounds rather than a stock market.
Sources
- Revolut: record profit of $2.3bn for 2025 as revenue surges to $6bnThe company’s 2025 results: revenue, profit, customers, balances, income by line, lending and targets. 24 March 2026.
- Revolut: Revolut launches UK bankThe lifting of restrictions on the UK banking licence, deposit protection and the plan to move 13 million customers. 11 March 2026.
- tech.eu: Revolut wins full UK banking licenceThe licence timeline from 2021 to 2026, the deposit cap and the valuation. 11 March 2026.
- a16z: Revolut, the algorithm that keeps compoundingAn investor’s reading of the 2025 annual report: where Revolut started, concentration of revenue, lending and survey findings. 24 March 2026.
Company names and marks belong to their owners and identify the subject of this independent case study. Compare another European fintech in the Klarna case study, keep learning with the free PMcademy levels, or see the state of the tech job market.