Revolut raised $500m in its recent Series D funding round and is looking to use it to buy companies that have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic.
This has been confirmed in a recent interview for The Financial Times by Revolut’s CEO Nikolay Storonsky.
Read also: Revolut has just lost two more executives
Storonsky sees “a real opportunity” for Revolut to become even stronger after the crisis. However, Revolut is likely suffering a serious hit to its revenues since lockdowns around the world are causing drop-in card transactions and people don’t need Revolut’s traveler perks.
But Storonsky commented with no lack of trust in the unicorns bright future: “This is not just blue-sky thinking—we’ve just done fundraising, we’re cash-rich.”
His vision is to build on Revolut’s roots as a traveler’s card and boost targeting offers in areas such as travel aggregation. This would allow customers to book flights or even hire cars via the Revolut app when travel restrictions are gone.
With this, Revolut recently appointed Don Hoang, a former Uber executive, to lead its negotiation efforts.
Strononsky commented on this: “A lot of travel aggregators are in trouble at the moment — we could probably purchase one and sell flight tickets at cost and be 10 to 15 percent cheaper than everyone else.”
Although Revolut has lost 8 executives just recently, it wasn’t forced to furlough its staff with just co-founders giving up their salaries willingly and remaining executives getting 25% pay cut.
It has also moved to provide insured banking accounts in its core country Lithuania, where Revolut has 300,000 customers and owns an EU banking licence. More about this in the article below.
Read also: Revolut launches a bank to provide insured deposits
Recent job adds in the UK suggest that Revolut is also planning to start offering credit cards after applying for a UK consumer credit licence.
