Revolut now has a million customers for its banking alternative

Fintech startup Revolut has reached a big milestone. The company now has over a million customers across Europe two years and a half after launch.

The company says that customers have saved $160 million in foreign exchange fees compared to a traditional bank account (£120 million). The startup tries to match the interbank rates as much as possible and charges 0.5 percent on your transaction if you don’t have a premium account and exchange more than £5,000/€5,000 per month.

Revolut also applies a small 0.5 percent to 1 percent markup when forex markets are closed during the weekend. This is still a lot cheaper than using your regular bank account to initiate an international transfer.

When you use Revolut’s card to pay abroad, the company also uses the same foreign exchange structure, which is much cheaper than traditional foreign transaction fees.

More interestingly, Revolut is currently acquiring between 3,000 and 3,500 new users every day, and it is accelerating. Three months ago, Revolut only got half as many new signups per day. In total, users have made 42 million transactions, representing $6.1 billion.

If you break it down by country, over 500,000 customers are based in the U.K. 150,000 users live in France, 60,000 customers are in the Baltics. And finally, Germany and Ireland have over 50,000 users each. And then there are 200,000 users based in other countries across Europe. 42 percent of the user base is aged between 25 and 35.

Let’s compare it to German fintech startup N26. It’s been a while since N26 updated its metrics. As of August 2017, N26 had 500,000 customers who spent $5.9 billion in total (€5 billion). At the time, the company said it was acquiring 1,500 new users a day.

Assuming linear growth, a little back-of-the-envelope calculation means that N26 should be closer to 641,000 users now. But it’s unclear if N26’s growth has also accelerated or slowed down. The company also has yet to launch in the U.K. But it is working on it for 2018.

Revolut has recently hired small local teams in key markets to work on user acquisition and growth. But that’s just step one as Revolut plans to expand to the U.S., Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand in early 2018.

Creating an account in Revolut is easier than creating a bank account as it is an electronic wallet. It’s basically just like creating a PayPal account. You then get personal IBANs and a payment card so that you can top up, exchange, send and spend your money all around the world.

Recently, Revolut announced plans to apply for a European banking license. This way, the company will be able to protect funds under the European Deposit Protection scheme. The startup is also working on Apple Pay, Android Pay, a travel insurance and the ability to buy shares, bonds and cryptocurrencies. That’s a lot of features, and it should help when it comes to attracting new users.