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Revolut’s “number one” priority is becoming a fully fledged UK lender, the fintech’s boss said, as the company pledged to invest £3bn in the country.
The investment promise came as Revolut unveiled expansion plans on Tuesday that would see the London-headquartered fintech expand into 30 new countries by 2030 as part of a push to reach 100mn users. It currently has more than 65mn customers globally.
Europe’s most valuable fintech announced that it would spend $13bn on the expansion plans. This includes the £3bn earmarked for the UK, and Revolut also plans on hiring 1,000 people in its home market.
The pledge — made at the opening of Revolut’s new Canary Wharf offices in London on Tuesday — comes less than a week after the company promised to invest $500mn in the US to accelerate its expansion plans, as part of a flurry of bilateral investment announced during President Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK.
Despite its plans to make forays into new markets, Revolut’s chief executive, Nik Storonsky, said that getting full regulatory authorisation to lend in the UK was his prime focus.
“The number one priority is actually rolling out our UK bank here. We have 11mn customers in the UK,” said Storonsky, who still owns about 25 per cent of the company.
Revolut is yet to clinch full authorisation to lend in the UK. After a three-year wrangle with the Bank of England, Revolut received approval for a banking licence but — as with all new lenders — had to enter a “mobilisation” phase. This caps total deposits at just £50,000. The central bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority has previously indicated that it hoped for the phase to end after 12 months but that date passed in July.
Revolut and the PRA have said that this is not a firm deadline, and that the mobilisation period could take longer.
The licence process has threatened to be politicised: the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, previously tried to broker a meeting between Revolut and PRA officials but was thwarted by Andrew Bailey, BoE governor, who thought that this was inconsistent with regulatory impartiality, the Financial Times reported.
Reeves, who attended the company’s new office opening, said that Revolut’s investment pledge was a “vote of confidence” in the UK.
The chancellor also used Tuesday’s event to make a pitch to skilled foreign workers after Trump signed an executive order to slap a $100,000 (£74,000) fee for applicants to the H-1B work visa programme.
“While President Trump announced late last week that it will make it harder to bring talent to the US, we want to make it easier to bring talent to the UK,” Reeves said. “We are expanding our global talent and high potential individual visa routes and we’re moving quickly to make those easier to access and more supportive of firms’ ambitions to bring talent here.”
Storonsky also admitted on Tuesday that Revolut’s early forays overseas — which involved applying for smaller accreditations rather than to act as a fully fledged lender — were mistaken.
“When we started international expansion many years ago, we tried to short-cut our banking licenses and apply for lighter licenses, e-mining licenses, FX licenses, payment licenses [ . . . ] and it was a worse product.”
Storonsky added the company had revised its approach in recent years. “We made a conscious decision: whenever we go to, or whenever we decide to go to a country, we either get the bank licence or we just buy a bank.”
Revolut is considering buying a nationally chartered bank in the US to accelerate its expansion in the country, the Financial Times previously reported. It has launched a fundraising round at a $75bn valuation, in part to fuel its global ambitions.
The company also announced on Tuesday that it will be applying for a full banking licence in South Africa as part of an expansion into the country.
This story has been amended to clarify how much Revolut says it will spend in its push to reach 100mn worldwide users by 2030
