Revolut, the British fintech unicorn, has reported over $1 billion in annual profits for the first time, marking a significant financial milestone as it prepares to roll out its long-awaited UK bank later this year.

The UK’s largest challenger bank, which only officially became a bank last year, enjoyed record profitability last year, with net profits swelling to $1.0bn (£790m), up from $428m (£344m) in 2023, a near 130% increase.  

Likewise, in a significant jump since last year, Revolut saw revenue increase by 72% to $4.0bn (£3.1bn) in 2024, up from $2.2bn (£1.8bn) in 2023, which the bank said was driven by an expanding customer base and increased product utilisation.

The bank said it had welcomed almost 15 million new customers globally over 2024, bringing the total to 52.5 million by year-end, a 38% increase, while total customer balances surged 66% to $38bn (£30bn), up from $23bn (£18bn) in 2023.

Notably, Revolut said its wealth operations, which include revenues from stocks and crypto, exploded in 2024, nearly quadrupling to $647m (£506m), an astonishing 298% increase considering the bank only launched its Revolut X crypto exchange and Revolut Invest app within the last year.

All of that success has sent Revolut’s value skyrocketing, with the bank now worth an estimated $45 billion (£33.8bn) according to data from Dealroom.

“2024 was a landmark year for Revolut,” said Nik Storonsky, CEO.

“We not only accelerated our customer growth, welcoming nearly 15 million new users globally, but critically, we also saw customers engaging more deeply by adopting a wider range of our services across both our retail offering and Revolut Business.

“But we’re just getting started. We’re making strong progress towards 100 million daily active customers across 100 countries, driven by growth in the UK, Europe, and our expansion markets.”

Although Revolut might be the standout performer in the UK’s new wave of neobanks, it is not the only fintech to have seen incredible growth last year.

Monzo, for example, might not boast the kind of jaw-dropping metrics of Revolut with an estimated value of $5.9 billion (£4.4bn), but it is still comfortably the UK’s second biggest challenger bank, with last year marking its first full year of profitability.

In 2024, Monzo made £15.4 million in profits and more than doubled its revenue over 2023, reaching £880 million, with half a billion raised in new capital.

As with Revolut, Monzo saw a spike in customers, adding more than two million new customers over the year, with deposits up from £6 billion in 2023 to £11.2 billion by the end of last year, an 88% increase.

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Starling Bank’s annual report from last year shows similar growth, though at a slightly smaller scale again. Starling added just shy of a million new accounts in 2024, with over four million now open and active, and claimed a 17.8% increase in customers.

That drove Starling’s revenue up by more than £200m over 2023, with last year seeing the bank pull in more than £682 million, a 1.5x year-on-year increase.

While Revolut, Monzo and Starling Bank are the UK’s top three challenger banks, the same story of growing profits and customer bases holds true for smaller outfits, like Atom Bank, which also saw its first profits last year, and the ‘green first’ Tandem, which has just announced underlying profits up 40% on 2023 to £24.1 million.

The ballooning of neobanks’ base figures is evidence of their widening appeal, with a survey from the Financial Services Forum in October finding that 14% of UK adults now use challenger banks, with 40% agreeing that online banks are just as trustworthy as traditional banks.