Europe’s neobanks are switching their attention to small business banking and expansion in the US, as they strive for global scale and profitability.
Business banking will soon be a bigger revenue earner for UK neobank Revolut than retail clients, which already number about 10 million, according to its head of business Vaidas Adomauskas.
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Vaidas Adomauskas, |
“We are the profit-generating side of the business,” he says, adding that Revolut will increase its number of business clients by four or five times by 2020, reaching well over a million.
Among the other UK-based neobanks, Monzo launched business accounts in March.
Meanwhile, Starling Bank – which has a longer-standing focus on business banking and lending, but targets smaller firms than, say, OakNorth Bank – is also seeing its growth in that segment fare better than in retail since the coronavirus, in part thanks to its launch of television advertising targeting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in February.
Last year, Starling won a £100 million grant from the Capability and Innovation Fund, a UK government vehicle to reduce Royal Bank of Scotland’s dominant market share in SMEs.
