Revolut’s fearless quest to finally secure a British banking licence is entering its fourth year.
In its early years, the Canary Wharf-based business was keen to talk up its cryptocurrency offering, which was way more extensive than anything the high street banks were doing. Indeed, many customers would have flocked to Revolut as a place to store their Bitcoin given that several banks banned crypto transactions altogether. But now the fintech seems to be quietly distancing itself from its roots.
Revolut said this month it was still in talks with financial regulators to get that licence, as it posted its 2023 accounts (on time this year, well done chaps). But aside from a lack of qualified audit opinion for the first time in a while, Spy noticed another thing that was conspicuously absent from the accounts: the word ‘crypto’.
Spy crunched the numbers and found that in its 2020 annual report, Revolut mentioned ‘crypto’ at least 88 times. But by the 2023 annual report, that had sunk to just 22 times, despite the fact that the report had more than doubled in size. ‘Crypto’ mentions per page plummeted from 1.1 to just 0.1, per the chart blow.
Perhaps if they can get it down to zero next year, they’ll finally get that coveted banking licence. Best of luck to them, says Spy.
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