More and more people in Latvia trust Revolut as a bank, as evidenced by the fact that account balances grew by 99% last year and the number of transactions increased by 40%. In 2023, the number of customers in Latvia grew by 25% and today is almost 350,000. The number of business clients doubled last year. Revolut was founded in the UK in 2015 by entrepreneurs Nick Storonsky (who gave up his Russian passport at the start of the war and is a British citizen) and Vlad Yatsenko. Revolut was originally a fintech app for fast payments and simple settlements. Since then, the company has grown to six thousand employees, and in 2021 it began to earn money for the first time since its founding. The Revolut group's turnover in 2023 grew by 95% to 2.1 billion euros, and profit before tax amounted to 503 million euros, the company said. During the year, Revolut added almost 12 million new customers worldwide. In total, 38 million people used this financial services app in 2023. And by June 2024, their number was already 45 million clients. Revolut operates in the European Economic Area (EEA), including Latvia, under the European arm of Revolut Bank, which is licensed by the European Central Bank and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania. Earlier this year, the bank reported that gross revenue for 2023 rose 123% to €1.1 billion and net profit was €78.4 million, a significant increase from €23.6 million in the previous year. For years, Revolut has reportedly said it wants to become a "super app" or one-stop app for everything money-related. The biggest innovation at the moment is plans to provide loans for the purchase of housing. Revolut sees opportunities to improve its mortgage origination system. For example, traditionally, in order to understand how much a bank is willing to provide a loan for, a client needs to come to a credit institution with a specific example of an apartment and, preferably, an appraisal. This process can be “flipped” and the client is told from the very beginning what kind of loan he can get. The size of the loan, of course, can vary depending on other factors. Revolut believes that home valuations are not so important for understanding how much money a bank can lend – data on popular areas where a lot of real estate transactions take place is widely available in the market, and you can easily find out how much a property is worth there. However, this offer will not be available in Latvia yet. The plan is to launch the service in Lithuania this year, and then possibly in another country with a larger number of users. However, it is possible that at some point this opportunity will be offered in Latvia.
