Revolut is planning to monetise customer data through advertising partnerships as the firm looks to diversify revenue streams on its path to more sustainable profitability.
The London-based company has hired Inam Mahmood, ex-head of e-commerce partnerships at TikTok UK, to lead a roughly 30-strong sales team for the new strategy.
Advertisers and distributors have already shown interest in partnering with the fintech, Revolut’s head of growth Antoine Le Nel told the Financial Times.
He added that the firm was running internal tests for targeted advertising and had held talks to sell advertising space on its app, expecting brands to become “more and more interested” if Revolut could make users spend more time on the platform.
The so-called media strategy comes as part of Revolut’s efforts to achieve superapp status. Le Nel said the firm wanted to become a part of customers’ daily routine in the same way they regularly check social media and emails.
He added that Revolut could eventually gain a “proper chunk” of its total revenue from targeted advertising.
The company’s business plan has reportedly set an internal target for advertising revenue of around £300m by 2026, representing nearly a third of Revolut’s entire revenue in 2022. Revolut declined to comment on the figure when approached by City A.M.
Despite landing a $33bn valuation in a funding round led by SoftBank in 2021 that made it the UK’s most valuation fintech firm, investor appetite for the sector has waned in recent years. Revolut’s valuation dropped to $18bn in 2022, although Schroders raised it to around $26bn at the end of last year.
Revolut is looking to deliver more regular profitability. Its most recent accounts for 2022 showed a £25m pretax loss for the year, swinging from a £40m profit in 2021 driven by a surge in cryptocurrency trading.
The fintech has sought to diversify its business model with an eSIM plan earlier this year, on top of revenue streams like payments, subscriptions, foreign exchange and crypto trading.
Meanwhile, audit issues and other regulatory hurdles have meant Revolut still does not have a UK banking licence, which could turbocharge growth in its home market, three years after first applying.