Author: Hasan Can Soygök, Founder, Remotify.co
Neobanks have spent the last decade chasing user numbers. Millions of signups. Tens of millions of downloads. However, there is a growing gap between those headline figures and the revenue they generate. While digital banks now capture nearly 40% of new banking relationships worldwide, they account for just 5% of retail banking revenue (Simon-Kucher). That mismatch tells us something important. Most neobank customers are barely engaged, and many are losing money for the banks that serve them.
So if 2026 is supposed to be the year neobanks finally turn a corner on profitability, the conversation needs to shift. Instead of asking how to get more users, the real question is how to make each user worth more.
The Secondary Account Trap
At the heart of the revenue problem sits a simple behavioural reality. Most people who sign up for a neobank do not use it as their main account. In fact, only about 10% of US consumers consider a neobank their primary bank. Globally, that number climbs to just 14%. The rest treat their digital bank as a side account for specific tasks like travel spending, splitting bills, or testing out a new card.
This creates what the industry calls the zombie account problem. A user signs up, maybe makes a few transactions, and then the account sits there doing almost nothing. Meanwhile, the neobank still pays for compliance, infrastructure, and customer support tied to that account. As a result, the average neobank loses roughly $11 per user per year.
Compare that to traditional banks. In the UK, average income per customer at a legacy bank sits around $360 a year. For neobanks in the same market, that figure drops to about $12. Even globally, the average neobank revenue per user only reaches $69 to $75 annually. Furthermore, customer churn in the personal banking segment averages 22%, which means neobanks often lose users before they ever become profitable.
The maths is straightforward. If acquisition costs sit between $26 and $65 per customer, and revenue per user stays below $75, the payback period stretches out for years. For many neobanks, it never arrives at all.
What the Winners Do Differently With Revenue
The profitable neobanks have not solved this problem by making their apps prettier. Instead, they found ways to become essential to their customers and then monetise that relationship across multiple products.
Revolut provides a clear example. Its 2024 annual report showed revenue of 3.1 billion pounds, with no single product or region making up more than 30% of the total (Revolut 2024 Annual Report). Subscriptions brought in 423 million pounds alone, a 74% jump from the year before. Moreover, 45% more users moved to paid tiers during the same period. Crypto trading, foreign exchange, and business accounts all contributed meaningful revenue streams on top of that.
Nubank took a different approach. Instead of spreading across dozens of products, it focused on becoming the primary bank for its customers in Brazil. Around 60% of monthly active users now treat Nubank as their main financial institution. That depth of engagement drives superior economics. Revenue hit $11.5 billion in 2024, with net income of $1.97 billion. Consequently, its average revenue per active customer reached roughly $11 per month, well above the industry average.
Then there is Starling Bank in the UK. Rather than competing for retail customers in an overcrowded market, Starling went after small and medium businesses early on. Business accounts averaged around $16,000 in deposits compared to $3,100 for personal accounts. This strategic focus made Starling the first UK neobank to reach profitability, and it has stayed profitable since 2022.
In other words, each of these banks found a specific path to making customers worth more. One diversified revenue. Another deepened engagement. The third picked a higher-value segment entirely.
Pricing Needs to Reflect the Cost to Serve
One of the biggest mistakes neobanks continue to make is offering everything for free. Free accounts made sense during the growth phase when venture capital was flowing freely. Global fintech funding peaked at $141 billion in 2021. However, that number collapsed to roughly $40 billion by 2024. The free-everything model no longer has a funding source to sustain it.
Profitable neobanks have moved toward tiered pricing that reflects what it costs to serve different customer segments. Revolut’s paid plans now drive a significant share of its revenue. Similarly, Monzo introduced its premium tiers and reported its second year of profitability with 60.5 million pounds in pre-tax profit.
Beyond subscriptions, lending remains the most reliable revenue lever. Nubank generates the majority of its income from credit products. Consumer lending carries higher margins than interchange fees or subscription revenue, though it also requires more sophisticated risk management. For neobanks without a banking licence, partnering with a licensed institution adds complexity and cost to every lending product.
Therefore, pricing strategy needs to answer one core question: does this customer generate more revenue than they cost to serve? If the answer is no, the neobank has two options. Either increase that customer’s engagement and willingness to pay, or stop subsidising the relationship.
Building a Revenue Engine, Not Just a User Funnel
The neobanks heading into 2026 with the best shot at profitability share a common trait. They have shifted from thinking about users as a funnel to thinking about users as a revenue engine. Every product decision, pricing change, and acquisition channel gets evaluated against contribution margin per cohort.
Simon-Kucher’s research across 400-plus neobanks found that fewer than 5% have reached breakeven (Simon-Kucher Neobanking Radar). Meanwhile, 34 neobanks closed or were acquired in just 18 months. Only 36 new ones launched in the same period. The era of launching a digital bank and hoping the economics work out later is over.
For the neobanks still chasing user counts, the lesson from 2024 and 2025 is clear. A million zombie accounts are worth less than a hundred thousand engaged primary customers. Accordingly, the path to profitability runs through revenue per user, not users per marketing dollar.
The neobanks that survive will be the ones that figured out how to make each customer worth something. Not someday. Right now.