Revolut lets staff swap pay for shares in the challenger bank
Revolut’s staff have been told they can swap their pay for shares in the challenger bank in a bid to ride out the coronavirus storm.
In February, Revolut bagged $500 million in funding
First reported by Financial News, the new scheme offers all staff the option to swap £1 of their salary for every £2 of share options in the company.
Co-founders Nikolay Storonsky and Vladyslav Yatsenko are also forgoing their salaries for a year like fellow challenger bank Monzo’s founder Tom Blomfield. Monzo has also had to furlough hundreds of staff.
It is understood other members of Revolut’s senior team have also taken similar pay cuts.
Co-founder of UK-based fintech ikigai, Maurizio Kaiser, told FinTech Futures last week that he believes the current climate “could completely wipe out a generation of start-ups, and also wipe out investors who won’t be able to invest in the next set of start-ups”.
“Very early stage investors have downside protection in the form of Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) and Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), but founders do not.
“They tend to forego a salary in the early stages and might even have invested their own savings,” says Kaiser.
The UK Treasury is understood to be in the process of considering a £300 million “runway fund” to help those loss-making start-ups fenced out of current government aid.
Revolut is still well-capitalised. In February, it bagged $500 million in funding from TCV, valuing it at $5.5 billion.
But according to a Financial News sources, the bank has, like many other neobanks, seen a dip in sales due to government-enforced lockdowns and travel bans which have cut into its interchange fee margins.
