Finance is also betting on the recovery of tourism. Indeed, it focuses precisely on travel to increase and diversify its core business. At least this is the curious choice of Revolut, the British fintech that has been one of the revelations of the last two years in the City: founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky (former trader of Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers), it has strung together a series of large loans, starting from 250 million dollars in 2018, then half a billion last year and another 800 million a few days ago. Revolut is one of the many online banks that offer low-cost financial services: today it has 16 million customers worldwide and has reached the monstrous valuation of 33 billion dollars (higher than that of Société Générale, to give a parameter). A success that has led it to be the main British fintech (the most valuable among financial startups based in London), despite the record losses in 2020.
Precisely to make its business more profitable, Revolut today wants to become a "super app" and find new sources of income precisely in tourism: through the same platform used for loans and banking services, from July in the United Kingdom and soon in other European countries it will be possible too book hotel rooms, apartments, holiday homes and even organized excursions. All while half the planet is still in full pandemic and international travel has not yet resumed, or in any case not yet at full capacity. But Storonsky urgently needs a turnaround: losses from 2019 to 2020 nearly doubled to £207m and are on the verge of exceeding revenues. The CFO Mikko Salovaara argues that a part of that red is attributable to investments and that therefore the adjusted losses are "only" 122 million. However, it must also be said that 10-15% of Revolut's revenues are now in cryptocurrencies, a risky and uncertain business. Better to focus on the recovery of real life.
