By
Steve Muchoki
March 12th, 2024
Since COVID-19 first broke out, Revolut has reportedly asked over 50 Poland and Portugal-based workers to quit. Meanwhile, the company revealed a new version of its app that is aimed at enhancing user experience.
Just days before it launched its “super app”, financial technology company Revolut fired more than 50 of its employees. The staff members were fired in Poland and Portugal and now they claim they were pressured into leaving their jobs at Europe’s fastest-growing fintech startup since the coronavirus pandemic struck.
However, these numbers are not included in the recent 62 redundancies announced by Revolut – because they were given the choice to leave by their own will (and get some small financial aid). Revolut says those people represented 3% of its staff.
Current and former Revolut employees say the staff was urged into accepting terminations, even though the company had no legal grounds to fire them. Some say this happened after the company heavily pushed a voluntary scheme where staff was asked to sacrifice part of their salary in exchange for shares in the company.
Cost-Cutting Plans as a Reason for Revolut Lay-Offs
Revolut admitted that few workers left the business for underperformance reasons. The Krakow office in Poland is the company’s biggest office and employs more staff than its London headquarters. Starting average net salaries were hovering between 3,500 and 4,000 zlotys a month (£700 to £800).
On April 14, Revolut announced potential sacking through cost-cutting plans, even though it got secured $500 million in new funding, pushing its worth to $5.5 billion in February 2020. The company noted these plans included a reduction in outsourcing costs and an “entirely voluntary” salary sacrifice scheme, where any employee could exchange part of their wages for double their value in Revolut share options. The shares in the scheme are valued at $121.4015 per share – the value of Revolut’s last fundraising round.
According to a company presentation from May 11, over 60% of staff opted into the scheme, which Revolut says will deliver around $900,000 in savings each month during the next year.
New Revolut Super App for Trading Cryptos and Gold
Be it as it may, two days ago Revolut presented its new ‘financial super app’ that promises to “reimagine and redefine” its offering to customers. The redesign enables its clients to manage their finances all in one place, with two main sections – Home and Wealth.
From the Home tab, Revolut’s users can manage their open banking-linked accounts as well as other budgeting and analytics tools while the Wealth tab is mostly imagined as a tool for trading stocks, cryptocurrencies and commodities.
Cryptocurrency trading has been extremely hip for Revolut’s clients, the number of users buying cryptocurrencies went up by 68% from 20 April to 4 May 2020, with the average amount purchased rising by 57% and the amount bought per trade jumping 63%.
In the coming months, Revolut plans to come out with new products and features to its now 12m strong customer base.
Revolut also has the possibility for gold and crypto trading for both its paying and non-paying users in order to attract more customers and widen its trading portfolio.
According to founder Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut has plans for the acquisition of its coronavirus-hit rivals and plans to use a piece of its momentary $500m Series D funding to do so.
However, Revolut has not been immune to the effects of the coronavirus crisis. Founders Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko have given up their salaries for the next twelve months as well as top executives who took a 25% pay cut.