Revolut is now bigger than Barclays 📈 Plus, the downturn claims another victim 🪦

Greetings, fintech enthusiasts! 

We’ve been writing a lot about challenger banks recently. This shouldn’t be a surprise, because they’re among the few winners in the great fintech funding drought of the last few years.   

But let’s be clear- nobody has won bigger than Revolut…  

What you need to know right now: 

Revolut secures $45bn valuation in share sale by employees – Financial Times  

The Financial Times reports that Revolut has defied the broader downturn in the fintech sector by securing a $45bn valuation in a share sale by employees. Staff at the UK-based firm will net roughly $500m USD between them.  

That makes Revolut the most valuable private tech company in Europe. 

The valuation surpasses some of the UK’s largest high street banks, including Barclays (£33.5bn) and NatWest (£29bn), but remains a long way behind global banking behemoth HSBC (£120bn). 

While fellow fintech titans like Checkout and Klarna suffered tumbling valuations during the fintech downturn, Revolut steamed ahead.  

All eyes are now on the company’s long-rumored IPO, with the FT also reporting that the UK government is trying to convince Revolut to list on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) rather than on New York’s Nasdaq.  

But this could be a challenge. Revolut’s global expansion was held up for several years by their difficulty in obtaining a UK banking license despite becoming licensed in Europe.  

In addition, the UK’s appeal as a serious place to do business has diminished drastically since the country’s withdrawal from the European Union.  

UK-based companies like Arm have chosen to list in New York rather than London due to “Brexit idiocy,” according to Arm co-founder Hermann Hauser.  

What else to read: 

Tally, which raised $172M in funding, is shutting down after running out of cash – TechCrunch 

The fintech downturn claims another victim…  

Tally, a fintech company focused on helping consumers manage credit card debt, has shut down after 9 years of operation.  

• The company was unable to secure necessary funding to continue operations, despite being last valued at $855 million and having raised $172 million in total funding.  

• In April, Tally announced it was pivoting from a consumer app to a B2B model, but apparently failed to successfully execute this transition.  

• Tally had notable investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and Shasta Ventures, with its last funding round being an $80 million Series D in October 2022. 

That's all for this edition. See you next time!