Seven out of 10 young adults are regularly putting money aside, with almost £174 a month being saved on average, showing UK millennials are “far more savvy” about finances than they are given credit for.

That’s the headline finding of new research based on real customer data drawn from smartphone-based banking service Revolut’s servers.

Revolut, which claims to have 2 million customers in the UK, says the data provided to Guardian Money puts to bed the “myth” that the millennial generation is frittering money on luxuries such as “avocado toast and chai lattes” instead of planning for the future.

Millennials are typically defined as those born between the early 1980s and the late 1990s or the start of the 2000s. The average age of a Revolut customer is 34.

The company analysed data relating to its customers (it boasts 3 million in mainland Europe), and said it had found 64% of European millennials are saving money on either a weekly or monthly basis – rising to 69% for those in the UK.

It also found in the UK they were saving an average of £173.94 a month, while the figure for their counterparts in Ireland was considerably less: £102.55.

The figures for Germany and France were £149.72 and £142.03 respectively. Spain was only a little behind the UK at £164.60, while the Czech Republic and Poland were £92.83 and £88.29 respectively.

In the UK, Revolut’s London customers save an average of £254.95 a month, compared with £162.65 for those in Edinburgh, £161.26 in Manchester, and £121.53 in Glasgow. The London figure is likely to be influenced by several factors, including higher earnings and high house prices.

When it comes to other European cities, the London figure dwarfs Paris and Dublin: £114.68 and £115.02 respectively. However, Berliners are just ahead at £257.12.

There are caveats to be applied: the findings are simply a reflection of one financial company’s customers and how they are saving. But it’s arguably a lot better than your standard “survey of 2,000 people” – the database was 2.8 million customers, and these are real averages.

Revolut has a feature allowing customers to round up their card payments to the nearest whole number and save their ‘“spare change”. It says this has proved popular among young people as it is a way of saving “effortlessly”.

Meanwhile, the challenges and burdens facing the millennial generation were laid bare by a major report issued by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority earlier this month. It said people in this age group “face a series of difficulties in building wealth … due to the combined impact of rising house prices, insecure employment and higher debt, including student debt”.

The FCA said it had crunched the numbers to try to find out how feasible it was for a millennial to accumulate the current levels of wealth enjoyed by the baby-boomer generation (which it defines as those born between 1946 and 1965).

To do this, it compared the average levels of wealth for each generation, and calculated the percentage year-on-year increase required to bridge the gap.

The FCA found that for the average millennial to achieve similar levels of wealth accumulation as those reaching retirement today, they would need to achieve “wealth growth” of about 48% year on year between age 20 and 36, then around 7% year on year between 37 and 51, and then around 6% year on year between 52 and 64.

So, not very feasible, it would seem.

Unlike baby boomers, millennials typically won’t have repaid their mortgage debt by the time they are in their 60s, says the regulator’s report.

However, the average millennial is more likely than a baby boomer to inherit some wealth, though this will happen later than previous generations.