Revolut: Europe's Most Profitable Fintech Has an Identity Problem

Revolut published its 2025 annual results last week.

Revenue grew 46% to £4.5 billion. Pre-tax profit jumped 57% to £1.7 billion — a 38% margin that most established financial institutions would consider a fantasy. Retail customers grew 30%, adding 16 million users in a single year to reach 68 million globally. Eleven separate product lines each exceeded £100 million in revenue. Return on equity sits at 35% despite being overcapitalized. Its Rule of 75 — revenue growth plus net profit margin — puts it in the same tier as the best technology companies on earth, not the best banks.

This is not a challenger bank story anymore. This is something else entirely.

In Spain, 38% of all newly opened bank accounts are Revolut accounts. In France, 37%. In Italy, 29%. These are not travel money apps sitting dormant between holidays. These are primary banking relationships — salary inflows, savings balances, lending products — migrating onto a single digital platform. Total customer balances grew 66% last year, faster than the customer base itself. 

Revolut now operates as a licensed bank in 30 countries. It received its full UK banking licence in March 2026 — a decade after founding, after a famously difficult regulatory process. Its loan book doubled to £2.2 billion. Savings balances more than doubled to £20.4 billion. It launched full banking operations in Mexico in January — the first independent digital bank to secure a Mexican banking licence through a direct application. It has applied for a US banking charter with the OCC and FDIC. It is piloting a pound-denominated stablecoin with the FCA. CEO Nik Storonsky's stated ambition is 100 million daily active customers across 100 countries. The march is well underway — 1 million new customers are joining every 17 days.

At some point, calling this a neobank becomes a category error.

The Identity Crisis

Revolut is currently valued at $75 billion — with a $100 billion secondary round being planned for the second half of 2026, and an IPO target of $150 billion according to people familiar with the matter. 

The multiple being applied to get there is 18.3 times revenue — nearly four times the industry median of 5.8x among neobanks, according to valuation analytics platform Multiples. Traditional banks like HSBC and Barclays trade at 1-2 times revenue. So Revolut is being priced somewhere between a tech company and a neobank, at a moment when it is actively becoming neither.

As Revolut acquires banking licences, takes deposits, builds a lending book and applies for US bank charters — does it deserve a tech multiple or a banking multiple? Because those two answers produce very different valuations.

M&A specialist Max Thomas puts the challenge plainly: Revolut earns approximately $101 in revenue per customer. The industry average among major neobanks is $155. SoFi — the US digital bank Revolut wants to compete with — earns $284 per customer. The company Revolut is trying to become earns nearly three times more per customer than Revolut does today.

The $150 billion IPO target requires public markets to accept a tech multiple for a company that is increasingly regulated, capitalized and operated like a bank.