Revolut Hacked Its First 10,000 Users Thanks To Linkedin Messages & Affiliate Links 🇬🇧
Ramp's valuation rise by $10B in 90 days 🇺🇸, MercadoLibre's fintech revenue jumps 48.9% in one year 🇦🇷, India’s remittances to reach $235B by 2030 🇮🇳 & more
Hi Global Fintechers!
While researching fintech ads to feature a fintech ad of the week, I stumbled upon this section of TikTok’s creative center that let you check out what are the most performing TikTok ads by industry and countries. That is how I found the fintech ad of the week of today’s issue (scroll to the end to see it), and I thought some of you might be as excited as me of this find.
🇬🇧 Revolut Hacked Its First 10,000 Users Thanks To Linkedin Messages & Affiliate Links
To get their first 10,000 users, Revolut went straight to a niche audience, which is targeting airline pilots and cabin crew. The team manually sent them personalized LinkedIn messages, and the strategy worked so well that their earliest user base was overwhelmingly from the aviation industry.
Another growth strategy Revolut employed in its early days was to secure the top spot on MoneySavingExpert, by proving they offered the cheapest foreign exchange, pairing the ranking with an affiliate link that brought in users at a customer acquisition cost (CAC) of £5.
Chad West (pictured above), the company’s first marketing lead, said that in the early days “pretty much everything you do doesn’t scale and you should embrace that.”
This story was shared by Lucy Heavens, founder of Fractional CMO, in a LinkedIn post about a Fintech Fringe Festival session she moderated with Chad and Irina Chuchkina, chief growth officer at Wallet in Telegram.
Growth Metric: £5 Customer Acquisition Cost
In its early days, Revolut acquired thousands of early users from affiliate site MoneySavingExpert at roughly £5 each.
Source: Global Fintech Insider
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🇦🇺 Sydney’s Hello Clever Grows Revenue 660% to $7.6M in One Year
Hello Clever, the all-in-one shopping and instant-cashback app, grew revenue 660% in just over a year, from $1 million in 2024 to $7.6 million in 2025. The Sydney-based company, co-founded by Caroline Tran (right) and Gavin Nguyen (left), provides AI-driven merchant tools and have a global footprint across more than 20 markets.
Tran also announced in a LinkedIn post that the company has reached a compound annual growth (CAGR) rate of 1,333.91%, and placing ninth in the Australian Financial Review’s (AFR) 2025 fastest-growing startups list. AFR’s list calculated the ranks according to companies CAGR from the last three financial years (2023, 2024, 2025).
Its Hello AI Data Analyst offers real-time insights such as top sales, week-over-week shifts, risks, opportunities and suggested actions. In an interview with AFR, Tran says the goal is to turn “every transaction into an opportunity to optimize revenue”. The company employs 70 people and plans to double that while hiring across Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney. Fragmented regional payment methods remain a hurdle, so Tran is open to mergers and acquisitions with partners that hold the right licences and banking access.
Growth Metric: 660% revenue growth in just one year
Hello Clever grew revenue from $1 million in 2024 to $7.6 million in 2025, powered by AI merchant tools and global expansion.
Sources: Global Fintech Insider & Australian Financial Review
🇮🇳 UPI’s Cross-Border Surge Is Creating a New Growth Lane for Global FinTechs
India’s inbound remittances are expected to grow from $148.7 billion in 2025 to $235.1 billion by 2030, a 58% jump, according to the PwC’s Indian Payments Handbook 2025–2030.
According to the report, Industry leaders say cross-border transactions (22%) and micro-lending (17%) will be among the important drivers in Indian’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) utility expansion. UPI is India’s QR code-based payment system that dominates the Indian payment market, with a whopping 87.7% market share.
UPI is also rapidly internationalizing. It is now linked to Singapore’s PayNow, being rolled out in some capacity in Trinidad and Tobago, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and the UAE and could eventually be accepted in Europe. With UPI projected to hit 1 billion transactions a day by 2028, its global footprint is becoming impossible for payment and remittance players to ignore.
Growth Metric: 58% remittance growth
India’s inbound remittances are projected to rise from $148.7 billion in 2025 to $235.1 billion in 2030, strengthening the case for global UPI integrations.
Sources: Global Fintech Insider & The Indian Payments Handbook 2025-2030
🇺🇸 Ramp Hits $32B Valuation Just Three Months After Reaching $22.5B
US-based payment processor Ramp has bumped its valuation to $32 billion after securing $300 million in funding, just three months after reaching $22.5 billion in July. The company has raised $2.3 billion in equity financing since its 2019 founding while surpassing $1 billion in annualized revenue.
Ramp has also doubled its customer base to 50,000, including real estate firm CBRE, e-commerce platform Shopify, defense company Anduril Industries and design software firm Figma. In an interview with Fortune, CEO Eric Glyman (pictured above) said Ramp “just about doubled revenue” in the past year.
Ramp competes with Brex, which was last valued at $12.3 billion during its peak in 2022. According to TechCrunch, Brex was reportedly projecting its annual net revenue to reach $500 million in 2025.
Ramp says its enterprise customer segment also expanded 133% year over year, reaching more than 2,200 enterprise clients. Across all customers, Ramp claims it now powers more than $100 billion in purchases annually.
Growth Metric: 133% enterprise customer growth
Ramp expanded its enterprise segment to more than 2,200 customers, a 133% increase year over year.
Sources: Crunchbase, TechCrunch & Fortune
🇩🇰 Flatpay Crosses $116M in Annual Revenue As Customer Base Surges To 60,000
Danish payments startup Flatpay CEO Sander Janca-Jensen (pictured above) confirmed the company has scaled its customer base to 60,000. This nearly 10x increase of 7,000 customers base since April 2024.
The company also crossed the €100 million (116 million USD) annual recurring revenue (ARR) milestone in October. Janca-Jensen noted that ARR is now growing by nearly €1 million (1.16 million USD) daily, driven by aggressive on-the-ground expansion across Europe.
Flatpay’s surge of customers is fueled by a straightforward value proposition for small and medium business (SMB), namely flat transaction rates, transparent pricing, and in-person onboarding. With SMBs comprising 99% of European businesses, this high-touch model has proved highly effective.
Looking ahead, Flatpay targets 300% growth in 2026, aiming for €400–€500 million (460 million USD to 570 million USD) in revenue. The company is currently active in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the U.K.
Fresh off a €145 million (169 million USD) funding round, Flatpay is now valued at €1.5 billion ($1.75 billion USD), officially joining Europe’s unicorn ranks.
Growth Metric: 60,000 customers
Flatpay has grown its merchant base nearly 10x since April 2024.
Source: TechCrunch
🇦🇷 MercadoLibre’s Fintech Arm Becomes ‘Most Defensible Moat’ as Revenue Jumps 48.9% In One Year
Latin America e-commerce giant MercadoLibre’s fintech arm continues to be the strongest driver of its ecosystem, according to an analysis by Seeking Alpha analyst Jack Elias.
He points out that fintech adoption is becoming one of the company’s most defensible moats, with fintech revenue up 48.9% year over year to nearly $2.2 billion during the third quarter 2025 as Mercado Pago.
Total payment volume grew 41%, while MercadoLibre’s loan book reached $11 billion, a 83% year over year increase, reflecting deeper penetration of credit across Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina.
Despite macro volatility in Argentina and higher funding costs in its lending business, Elias said MercadoLibre loan performance remained resilient, with non-performing loans contained even as the credit portfolio expanded sharply.
Growth Metric: 48.9% year over year fintech revenue growth
MercadoLibre’s fintech division grew almost 50% YoY, reaching nearly $2.2 billion in Q3.
Source: Seeking Alpha & Global Fintech Insider
🇦🇷 Fintech Ad of The Week: Western Union’s Pago Fácil Seduces Users With A Weekly 1M Pesos Draw
A new TikTok ad offering a chance to win 1,000,000 Argentine pesos (702 USD) for paying a bill is now ranking in the top 2% for click-through rate on TikTok. The campaign comes from Pago Fácil, the Western Union owned Argentinian service that lets people without credit cards make online purchases by depositing cash at its national network of kiosks or by paying directly through its app. The ad’s pitch is simple. Pay a bill through Pago Fácil, either online or at a kiosk, and you are automatically entered into the weekly draw.
Source: Global Fintech Insider
Upcoming Fintech Events
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Who Am I?
Hi, my name is Julien Brault.
From 2017 to 2024, I was the CEO of Hardbacon, a fintech I co-founded, which reached 400,000 unique visitors at its peak.
A Google update ultimately sealed the company’s fate, and I started this newsletter to keep myself busy in the aftermath.
I then launched an another fintech affiliate site called MooseMoney, but I still find the time to publish this newsletter weekly.
Why share this?
Because my goal is to use my experience as an economic journalist, fintech entrepreneur and product manager to present the most essential fintech news from around the world through the eyes of an insider.
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