Finance Monthly December 2019 Edition

By Richard Rossington 2019 has been a remarkable year for Revolut in terms of growth. Founded by Nikolay Storonsky, the digital finance platform which offers banking, currency exchange, cryptocurrency and stockbroking services, currently has around 6 million customers (up from 1.5 million a year ago) and is welcoming around 16,000 new users every day. It also currently has around 1,200 employees – the bank has recruited around 800 new team members in the space of a year. Despite the fact that Revolut reported a pre-tax loss of £33 million in 2018, compared with £15 million the previous year, exciting things such as a potential $1.5 billion funding round, as well as reports that Japanese investment giant SoftBank might invest in the challenger, are happening. Founded in 2012 in San Francisco, Coinbase is a digital currency exchange which provides you with a platform where you can buy, sell, and manage your cryptocurrency portfolio. To wrap up an exciting year, Coinbase recently announced that it’s added five new cryptocurrencies to its offering (BAT, REP, XLM, XRP and ZRX), which brings the amount of the cryptocoins it supports to nine (with the original four being BTC, ETH, BCH and LTC). It’s also launched in 10 fresh international locations - Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Hungary, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Sweden. With its secure storage and insurance policy which covers all cryptocurrency stored on Coinbase’ servers, the FinTech is one of the most trusted cryptocurrency platforms in the world. Founded by internet entrepreneurs Jeremy Allaire and Sean Neville in 2013, Boston-based Circle is a platform which helps you use, trade, invest and raise capital with open crypto technologies. With offices in Boston, New York, San Francisco, Dublin, London and Hong Kong, the company has caught the attention of Jim Breyer (Facebook), Goldman Sachs, IDG Capital (Baidu, Tencent), General Catalyst (AirBnB, Snapchat) and Accel Partners who have supported the company with $250 million. Regarded as one of the most popular neobanks out there, Monzo is currently used by 3,437,886 people and counting – according to its website, 40,000 people open a Monzo bank account every week. With its new features such as the ‘get paid a day early’ and the ‘salary sorter’ which separates your money between savings, bills and spending so you can't overspend, the FinTech’s super user-friendly app is continuously disrupting online banking. Despite its unicorn valuation though, UK-based Monzo operates under the “disrupt-now-and- make-money-later” approach – it reported losses of £47.2 million in the fiscal year ending February 2019, which are expected to rise further this year due to a £20 million marketing drive. However, with its rapidly growing number of users and staff (1,351 people at present), Monzo will definitely continue to drive innovation and be a trusted partner to tens of thousands of people in 2020 and beyond. Starling Bank is another online-only challenger bank which is disrupting traditional banking through innovation and technology. Launched in 2017 by Anne Boden in the UK, it recently hit 1 million users and is growing at a similar pace to Monzo. Over the past couple of years, Starling Bank has won a number of awards such as Best British Bank and Best Current Account 2019 and is also reportedly on- track to reach profitability by the end of 2020 - a rarity among the challenger banks. 11 www.finance-monthly.com FRONT COVER FEATURE - 20 FINTECHS TO WATCH IN 2020