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Updated 16 min read

What Revolut, Nubank, Monzo and Chime did in 2026 that most banks still haven’t

Revolut, Nubank, Monzo and Chime all turn a profit now. What 12 reports and their results say about the race for the salary account

Sergey Krasotin

Founder, Humbleteam · 10+ years in fintechVisaRaiffeisen

Why it’s important now

Revolut, Nubank, Monzo and Chime now earn more on their equity than most banks (about 35% for Revolut and 33% for Nubank, against 12% for US banks), and they keep customers by winning the salary account every payday. Humbleteam designs neobank and banking products for banks and fintechs such as Raiffeisen, Bank of America and ING, and has worked with Oxygen, a Y Combinator neobank that raised $45M+, reached 250K+ monthly active users and was named Best Digital Bank at the 2021 Finovate Awards, and SadaPay, which passed 15M+ downloads before Papara acquired it.

For ten years, banks saw neobanks as great apps with no profit. Now Revolut, Nubank, Monzo and Chime are all profitable, and the two biggest make billions. So where does their money come from, and what can modern banks and fintechs take from their playbook?

I wrote this because I’ve designed for 30+ major banks and 56 fintechs, from leading banks in Europe to the main banks in the UAE and fintech unicorns in the US. And one question keeps coming up: what makes neobanks so different?

What follows is almost a month of my work. Part of the data comes from my own usability tests. Part comes from my clients, shared with their permission and anonymized. Part came straight from the press offices of large neobanks, at my request. The rest is public results and industry reports.

1. How neobanks earn more than most banks now

On average, banks in the US earned 12% on their equity in 2025, and banks in Europe 11.6%. Nubank earned 33% in its latest quarter. Revolut sits around 35%. The leading neobanks now earn more on their money than most banks do.

Revolut and Nubank earn up to 3x more on equity than the average bankFor every £100 of its owners’ money, Revolut makes about £35 a year, an average bank about £12. The next chapters show how that extra profit wins your customers’ salaries.

Return on equity, %

  • ~35%Revolut
  • ~30%Nubank
  • 12%Average US bank
  • 11.6%Average European bank

Return on equity. Bank figures are industry averages. Source: McKinsey, “Global Banking Annual Review 2026”, May 2026.

The latest results, company by company:

  • Nubank earned $1.06 billion in one quarter (!), its first quarter above $1 billion, on revenue of $5.9 billion, up 39%.
  • Revolut grew revenue 46% to £4.5 billion in 2025 and made £1.7 billion before tax. That is a 38% margin and its fifth profitable year in a row.
  • Monzo grew revenue 39% to £1.7 billion and made £172.6 million of adjusted profit before tax, its third profitable year.
  • Chime, the newest of the four to profit, made $28 million of net income on $670 million of revenue. It was its second profitable quarter in a row.

And they did it while growing fast. Revolut grew its customer base by more than 40% in 15 months and passed 70 million customers in 2026. Nubank now serves 139 million.

I see the same thing across the market. Eight leading UK neobanks made more than £1.2 billion of profit together in 2025, after losing about £250 million in 2020. Among the 85 largest public fintechs, 74% are now profitable, up from 68% in 2024.

Revolut earns more per employee than the big UK banks, and grows profit up to 4x fasterEach Revolut employee brought in £414k in 2025, versus £281k to £323k at the big three. Its profit grew 57%, theirs 12% to 24%. How? Chapter 8 has the answer.

Revenue per employee, 2025, £ thousand

  • £414kRevolut
  • £323kLloyds
  • £313kBarclays
  • £281kNatWest

Profit before tax growth, 2025 vs 2024, %

  • +57%Revolut
  • +44%Monzo
  • +24%NatWest
  • +13%Barclays
  • +12%Lloyds

Source: company annual reports and 20-F filings (Monzo: year to March 2026). Revenue per employee uses average staff (Lloyds: year-end FTE). Neobanks report revenue before interest costs, banks report income after them, so Monzo, with larger interest costs, is left out of the left chart.

Why this matters for your bank: a neobank that earns 33% on its equity has spare cash. It can pay for better savings rates, rewards and credit for years without asking investors first. That cash pays for the offer to your customers’ salaries. Chapters 2 to 8 show where it goes.

So let’s start with the biggest question: how did “free” apps start making billions in profit? Let’s get into it.

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2. How to get £708M a year for a free app

Part of the answer is subscriptions. Revolut’s subscriptions brought in £708 million in 2025, up 67%. That is about 16 percent of group revenue, paid by customers who could use the app for free.

Monzo runs the same model on a smaller scale: 1.6 million of its customers pay for a subscription plan.

McKinsey’s UK team describes the two tools banks have to win the main account. Loyalty programs reward salary, tenure and product depth. Subscriptions sell everyday benefits for a monthly fee. The leading neobanks use both, and they get paid for the second.

What to do in 2027: pick one model per customer segment and give it a clear job, as McKinsey suggests.

3. How to win salary day

The leading neobanks no longer wait for customers to make them primary. They pay for it.

McKinsey’s UK report has the clearest picture of the fight. Incumbents still hold primary status for 55 to 65 percent of their customers. Neobanks hold 15 to 25 percent. Neobanks and fintechs now hold about 27 percent of all UK banking relationships, up from low single digits a decade ago.

But the salary is a weaker signal than it looks. From 2023 to 2025, the share of UK customers paid into their primary current account was about flat. Transaction primacy fell about 2 points and digital primacy about 6. Many people leave their pay with the incumbent because changing payroll is a hassle. Soon after payday, they move their spending money to a challenger. The incumbent keeps the salary. The challenger becomes the bank they use every day.

Figure 1. Change in UK primary current-account measures, 2023 to 2025 (percentage points)
MeasureChange
Salary paid into the account0
More than 10 transactions a month-2
More than 20 app logins a month-6

Source: McKinsey, “The decade to redefine UK banking”, September 2026 (Finalta by McKinsey data). McKinsey reports the salary share as about zero.

The pattern is the same in four markets: they reward the deposit itself.

  • Revolut. In 2025, the number of customers using Revolut as their primary bank grew 45%, while its user base grew 30%. McKinsey, citing Revolut, puts self-reported primary users at 19 percent, up from 11 percent in 2023. Local account numbers now let customers in 13 European markets receive their salary straight into Revolut.
  • Monzo. 49% of Monzo’s 10.4 million monthly active users call it their primary bank. Deposits rose 55% to £25.7 billion, and deposits per active user reached £2,462.
  • Chime. In April 2026 Chime launched Chime Prime for members with $3,000 or more of direct deposits a month. The tier offers a 3.75% savings rate and 5% cash back in a category the member picks. Chime says Prime members bring in more than twice the revenue of an average active member.
  • Nubank. Nubank says it leads Brazil in primary banking relationships. In July 2026 it launched Croma, a tier that rewards customers for bringing more of their financial lives to Nubank.

Other markets show the same split:

  • US. Only 4 percent of new checking customers pick their existing bank without shopping around, down from 25 percent in 2018. McKinsey also sees more people split their salary account from their primary account, with a standing transfer from the old bank to a fintech.
  • Europe. In six European markets, customers held accounts at 2.6 banks on average in 2025, up from two in 2021 (McKinsey).
  • Globally. Accenture found 61% of banking customers had stayed with their main bank for seven years or more. Many of them are “lazy loyalists” who stay out of habit, not enthusiasm.

This matters because primacy pays. McKinsey finds a primary bank is three to four times more likely to be considered for the next product, and about twice as likely to cross-sell one. Whoever owns the daily app owns the next loan.

What to do in 2027: track engagement primacy (logins, card transactions, bills paid) next to salary deposits. Treat a standing transfer out on payday as an early churn signal, not a normal habit. Then design the payday moment itself. It is the one screen where the salary either stays or leaves.

4. Where neobank loans are moving

Accenture counts around 700 digital banks and wallets. For years they were strong on flow, meaning payments, and weak on stock, meaning deposits and loans. They won ground in international payments, youth accounts and small unsecured loans. Yet after a quarter century of digital disruption, not one new entrant has reached the global top 200 banks by assets.

Licenses are changing that. McKinsey counts 21 US bank charter applications in 2025, against one in 2024, with approvals about 40 percent faster than usual. The moves of the past year:

  • Revolut’s UK bank left its restricted start-up phase in March 2026. The same month, Revolut filed for a US national bank charter.
  • Nubank won US approval to set up a national bank in January 2026 (McKinsey, citing Nubank).
  • Monzo gained a banking license in Ireland to serve customers across Europe (McKinsey).

A license gives a neobank cheap deposits to lend. Revolut’s lending book more than doubled to £2.2 billion in 2025, yet its loan-to-deposit ratio was only 6.2%. That leaves a lot of room. In the US, BCG notes Chime started Instant Loans of up to $500 in 2025.

The main account makes this lending safer. Nubank says customers who use it as their primary bank show delinquency at roughly half the portfolio average.

What to do in 2027: defend the products where you still lead, mostly mortgages, protection and larger loans. The next chapter shows why mortgages are next.

5. Next stop: mortgages

McKinsey’s UK team sees Revolut moving toward the roughly £1.7 trillion UK mortgage market. With a loan-to-deposit ratio of 6.2%, it has the deposits to start.

Whether the neobank economics survive this step is still open, and McKinsey’s UK report leaves it open too. Neobanks proved they can win customers and deposits profitably. Mortgages and larger loans need more capital and long credit histories.

Savings and wealth are the other half of the balance sheet. McKinsey estimates £500 billion to £700 billion of UK savings could move from deposits into investments over the next decade.

What to do in 2027: keep the money inside the bank as it moves from deposits into investments. McKinsey calls this turning deposit outflows into wealth inflows.

6. Business banking trends

Neobanks are now running the same playbook with small businesses.

Monzo’s business customers grew 45% to 905,000 in the year to March 2026, about 1 in 7 UK businesses. Revolut ended 2025 with 767,000 business customers, up 33%. Revolut Business now brings in 16% of group income.

McKinsey explains why this is dangerous for banks. Business primacy is won early, when a company is formed. It is then reinforced by daily payments, expenses and payroll, not by lending. In the UK, more than 60 percent of commercial banking revenue already sits outside lending.

Larger clients are moving too. In Visa’s survey of commercial banks, 84% report moderate or significant pressure from fintechs. Three in four say at least a quarter of their business clients are moving funds away from their main bank. McKinsey’s wallet-share survey finds corporates keep about 73 percent of their wallet with primary banks, and anchor banks win up to three times the wallet share of noncore banks. About 40 percent of corporates are open to nonbank financing over the next three years.

What to do in 2027: be there when the company is formed, with the account, payroll and expense cards in one place. A bank that only holds the credit line will keep the risk and lose the data.

7. How Nubank won 16M customers on day one

In August 2026 Nubank launched its bank in Mexico with 16 million customers. It did not win them in a day. The bank opened with customers Nubank already served, so the license turned existing users into bank customers.

That is the flow-to-stock move from chapter 4 at full scale. First win people with an everyday product. Then the license turns that attention into deposits and loans. Nubank now serves 139 million customers, and it won US approval to set up a national bank in January 2026.

Figure 2. Customers of four neobanks, latest reported date (million)
NeobankCustomers
Nubank (June 2026)138.9
Revolut, retail (December 2025)68.3
Monzo (March 2026)15.2
Chime, active members (June 2026)10.4

Source: Nu Holdings Q2 2026 results; Revolut Annual Report 2025; Monzo Annual Report 2026; Chime Q2 2026 results. Each company counts customers its own way. Chime counts only members who moved money in the last month.

What to do in 2027: count the customers who use your app every day but keep their salary elsewhere. A licensed neobank can turn that habit into deposits, as Nubank did in Mexico.

8. How to get better prices, perks and products

The chart in chapter 1 asked how Revolut earns more per employee. Mostly with a cheaper machine.

McKinsey counts 200 to 250 full-time staff per million customers at leading UK neobanks, against 700 to 1,100 at large incumbents. BCG puts many traditional banks’ cost-to-income ratio above 60%, against about 35% at well-run digital banks. Revolut cut its cost to serve a customer from about £25 in 2022 to about £21 in 2025 while nearly tripling its customer count (McKinsey).

That gap is what customers see as better prices, perks and products. A bank that spends less on every account can pay more for savings, give more cash back and launch the next product sooner. For the main account, profit buys time: a profitable neobank can pay for rates, rewards and credit for years without asking investors first.

What to do in 2027: look past the neobanks’ app ratings and benchmark their cost to serve and return on equity. That cost gap will fund their offer for your customers’ salaries.

9. Where the neobank model can break

The charter. A charter removes the partner bank, and with it the buffer. The fintech becomes the bank and carries every rule change itself. Investors may also start valuing it like a bank (McKinsey).

The US. BCG expects European neobanks to keep taking share, but sees the US as a harder market. Fewer than 4% of Americans are unbanked, digital acquisition is expensive, and trusted incumbents spend heavily on their own apps. BCG expects US success to be selective and niche. Chime’s 10.4 million active members next to Nubank’s 139 million customers make the point. Revolut and Nubank are applying for US charters anyway.

Trust in new things. McKinsey’s 2025 European survey (20,900 people) found, for the first time, slightly higher trust in fintechs and digital banks than in traditional banks: 8.3 against 7.9 on a 10-point scale. Yet in McKinsey’s June 2026 UK survey, 64 percent of AI users would trust their primary bank most to offer AI services, against 8 percent for an independent fintech. McKinsey’s April 2026 survey has 62 percent of consumers trusting their primary bank most with gen AI financial services, against 19 percent for a big tech company. Accenture finds 86% of consumers would trust their main bank to deliver AI assistants. My read: people trust the neobank app for everyday money, and still trust the old bank more with new things.

AI agents and deposits. McKinsey estimates that $23 trillion of the world’s $70 trillion of consumer deposits sits in checking accounts that pay close to nothing. If AI agents moved just 5 to 10 percent of balances to better rates, bank deposit profits could fall by 20 percent or more. That threat hits whoever holds the deposits, and neobanks now hold a lot more of them.

10. Three moves to copy for 2027

  1. Win payday, not just the salary. Track logins, card transactions and bills paid next to salary deposits, and design the payday screen where the salary stays or leaves.
  2. Give the main account a clear reward. Pick a loyalty program or a subscription for each customer segment, and give it one job.
  3. Be there when the company is formed. Offer the account, payroll and expense cards in one place, before a neobank does.

What I’m watching in 2027:

  • How fast Revolut moves UK customers into full current accounts, and how many of them switch their salary.
  • Whether Chime Prime moves the share of members who send it $3,000 or more a month.
  • Nubank’s and Revolut’s first steps as US banks.
  • Whether UK digital primacy keeps falling, or the 6-point drop stops.

We’ve been lucky to design for neobanks. Two of them were Oxygen, a Y Combinator neobank that raised $45M+ and reached 250K+ monthly active users, and SadaPay, which passed 15M+ downloads before Papara acquired it. In both, the moment that mattered most was payday: how fast the salary showed up, and how clearly the app showed what was left to spend.

Today a main account has to be won again every payday.

Sources

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