Friedrichstraße in Berlin, where the hub will be located. Image: © MeerPixel/Stock.adobe.com
Revolut’s new hub will be located in Friedrichstraße, which is an existing fintech ecosystem in Berlin, and one of the largest in Europe.
UK fintech start-up Revolut has announced plans to open a tech hub in Berlin.
Set up in 2015, the pre-paid debit card, peer-to-peer payments, remittance, and currency and cryptocurrency exchange company was founded by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko in London. At the beginning of 2019, the company had more than 630 employees, and it has been steadily recruiting ever since.
Now, the fintech giant has sights set on opening a tech hub in Berlin. In this hub, Revolut plans to hire 80 people for a variety of tech jobs that range from areas such as software engineering and data science, to product development and growth.
It’s expected to open in October of this year.
The move is strategic and may strengthen the brand in Germany while increasing Revolut’s presence in Berlin, which is the home of its main competitor, N26. In January 2019, N26 was valued at $2.7bn, overtaking Revolut which, at the time, was valued at $1.7bn.
It’s also hoped that the small tech hub may help Revolut customise its product to better cater to the larger European market. There are currently features on the app that are specifically aimed at users in the UK, such as the changing of a PIN code on an ATM (which cannot be done in Germany, France and a number of other European countries, according to TechCrunch).
The hub’s employees will also work on Revolut’s commission-free stock trading feature. It’s also likely that this team will work on an app for children that Revolut has had in the pipeline since at least January 2019, called Revolut Youth.
Revolut Youth will allow users to add their children (who must be over the age of seven) to an account as a secondary user. The company believe this feature will improve children’s financial literacy. The company is also developing a similar feature for kids in their late teens.
With 150,000 Revolut users in Germany, the company also plans to launch a local marketing and communications team in that market to help the company catch up with N26.
Revolut’s new hub will be located in Friedrichstraße, which hosts an existing fintech ecosystem in Berlin – one of the largest in Europe.
Co-founder of Revolut, Yatsenko, said: “There is an incredible amount of technical talent in Berlin, as we begin to scale our operations globally and expand our range of services, finding this kind of talent will be essential. We’re excited to begin our investment in Germany and create even more jobs in Berlin’s vibrant fintech ecosystem.”
Outside of the proposed tech hub, Revolut currently has job vacancies around the globe, from NYC, London and San Francisco to Moscow, Singapore and Mumbai.
