Banks are essentially technology companies with bad technology. We're fixing that. Every bank charges you fees for things that should cost nothing. Currency exchange should be free. Transfers should be instant. We make them so.
I got ripped off on foreign exchange fees during a holiday trip and thought — this is insane, why is this still happening in 2015? So I built a company to fix it. The best businesses come from personal frustration.
We ship features faster than banks can schedule meetings about them. Speed is our moat. By the time a traditional bank decides to build something, we've already launched it, tested it, and iterated three times.
I was at Lehman Brothers when it collapsed. I watched a 158-year-old bank disappear overnight. That taught me two things: institutions are fragile, and complacency kills. I run Revolut like it could die tomorrow.
People say our culture is intense. It is. We are trying to replace a trillion-dollar industry. That is not a 9-to-5 job. If you want comfortable, go work at a bank — the ones we're replacing.
Getting a UK banking license took five years. Five years of regulators, audits, compliance reviews, and paperwork. It nearly broke us. But now we can take deposits and lend money — we're a real bank now, not just an app.