Fed up with waiting for its UK banking licence, Revolut has looked to diversify revenues by appointing a former TikTok executive to oversee a potential new media strategy where it monetises customer data by sharing it with advertising partners.
The London-headquartered fintech still wants to be a bank and its e-money app currently offers many of the same services as a bank, but the application does not seem to have made progress despite the company's efforts.
Late last year it appointed experienced banker Francesca Carlesi as its new CEO and cleared up the accounting issues that had been seen as hurdles to its licence application.
With the wait still going on, Antoine Le Nel, Revolut's head of growth, told the Financial Times that the fintech could transform into a media business, leveraging user data for monetization.
He said Revolut could become "a place where you have an audience and data about the audience and you monetise this".
The company has appointed Inam Mahmood, formerly of TikTok UK, to lead a 30-person team dedicated to this new media strategy, where an internal target is aiming for £300 million of revenue by 2026 compared to the most recent turnover figure of £923 million from 2022.
A spokesperson for the fintech noted that the media initiative and the banking licence application are not related and the new business is just another part of the company's ongoing revenue diversification.
Revolut's valuation has grown to around £20.6 billion, it was calculated this month, based on the implied valuation from a stake held by shareholder Schroders.
Last month, CEO Carlesi said the prospect of a London initial public offering was still the table, despite the exodus to New York in the past year.