London-based fintech startup, Revolut, has announced the launch of ‘Pockets’ – a new feature that enables customers to stay on top of their spending as well as makes organising rent, bills, and subscriptions effortless, as claimed by the company.
How does ‘Pockets’ work?
Customers can set aside their money into Pockets for their buying needs. Thereby ensuring they don’t accidentally spend their rent.
“If customers already have scheduled payments set up with Revolut, then all they need to do is create their Pockets for their various subscriptions and bills, then sort their bills into them. Revolut will make sure that they are paid when they’re due,” claims the company.
And in this way, customers can automatically put money aside for bills by setting up recurring funding on payday into their Pockets, so their bills money is automatically set aside, and the customers are left only with their balance which can be spent or saved freely.
The scheduled payments, in a way, will help customers to never miss out on any payments. “We understand how difficult it is to stay on top of all your various bills and subscriptions. With our new feature Pockets, we’re helping our customers manage all their finances in one place and get on top of their spending once and for all,” says, Marsel Nikaj, head of savings at Revolut.
Currently, Pockets is available to Revolut customers in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.
The feature will roll out to additional European and Revolut’s global expansion markets in the future.
About Revolut
London-based challenger-bank Revolut works with the vision to build a digital and sustainable alternative to traditional banks.
Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, Revolut is a financial services company that specialises in mobile banking, card payments, money remittance, and foreign exchange. It includes a prepaid debit card, currency exchange, and peer-to-peer payments.
In addition, one of its key features includes conversion from one currency to another based on interbank rates with no fee. Customers can hold foreign currencies in their accounts or send money to another Revolut user or a bank account outside of their country.
According to the company, it is on a mission to help customers improve their financial health, promote financial cohesion across communities, and empower customers to have more control.
Currently, it has over 13 million customers around the world who use Revolut’s products to make more than 100 million transactions a month.
Breaking even
The company has reportedly managed to break even in November. Nik Storonsky, the CEO and co-founder of Revolut, tells CNBC that the company witnessed a 40 percent dip in revenues during the initial days of the pandemic. However, he also confirmed that the company had recovered remarkably well since then. “We’re now actually 50% ahead in terms of revenues compared to pre-Covid levels. Gross margins increased significantly as well,” Storonsky says.
He further tells CNBC, “In terms of financials, we broke even in November and we’re doing much better compared to pre-Covid times.”
Recent growth and developments
Earlier this month, Revolut announced the launch of acquiring for Revolut Business customers at Web Summit 2020 – a step to compete with market incumbents Stripe, Adyen, or Checkout.com. With the new acquiring solution, the company enables businesses in 13 European countries to accept card payments online, directly into their account.
Prior to that, the company had launched its online Web App for its userbase of 13 million customers. The Web App is believed to let customers access their accounts safely from a web browser besides the smartphone app. According to the company, there is two-factor authentication to securely sign in to the Revolut Web App.
In November, the London-based company launched Google Pay for its customers, to be among the first financial services companies to provide Google Pay as a service within its app.
Earlier this year, in February, Revolut raised €460M in its Series D round of funding led by US-based growth capital firm TCV. The company has raised overall funding of about €769M, to date. In addition, the round positioned Revolut among the highest valued fintechs in the world with a valuation of nearly €5B.
