- Key insights: 2025 marked Revolut’s fifth consecutive year of net profitability. This year, the neobank has its sights set on expanding in the U.S., one of the key pillars of its global footprint.
- What’s at stake: Revolut is on a quest to create a global super app, and hopes a U.S. banking charter will help catapult its retail business in a region where its business segment has been gaining traction.
- Forward look: The neobank plans to take a more credit-forward approach to consumers in the U.S.
Fresh off its fifth consecutive year of net profitability, Revolut this year is looking to accelerate its U.S. expansion.
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The company has already applied for a
The U.S. represents a “key pillar” of Revolut’s global expansion, Ignacio Zunzunegui, Revolut’s interim head of growth in the U.S., and head of growth in Europe and Latam, told American Banker.
“Our intention is to build a local team, create hundreds of highly skilled American jobs here, and compete head to head with the U.S. banking sector,” Zunzunegui said.
The neobank already has about one million customers and 200 employees in the country, and is looking to lean into credit products as it builds out its retail offering for the U.S.-based consumers.
“We’re adapting our growth model. What’s worked in Europe doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to work in the U.S.. We’re going to be a credit first company. We want to push credit a lot more,” Zunzunegui said, but noted that the company’s offering in the U.S. will still look very similar to its global offering.
Revolut has little interest in eating the proverbial elephant all at once, and intends to break down its expansion by both region and demographics, he said. “To win in the U.S., going national from day one is not as easy.”
The neobank is looking to capitalize on its presence in Latin America to capture crossover with the U.S. market, and is also looking to bank a “big chunk” of the Latin Americans living in the U.S.
Revolut has a
In the U.S. in 2024, between 65 and 68 million people are of Hispanic or Latino origin, according to the Pew Research Center. That’s nearly 20% of the total U.S. population.
“We strongly believe that a global financial solution is the future of banking, [and] we feel that this is potentially our Trojan horse in every market that we enter,” Zunzunegui said. “We have a lot of customers already from a given nationality before we even launch in a given market. One example is Colombia. We haven’t even launched in Colombia, and we already have 100,000 Colombians worldwide that have a Revolut account.”
The thesis is that Revolut’s strong brand awareness abroad gives it a solid product-market fit with that profile of consumer. Its products, including international transfers, favorable exchange rates and the ease of account opening are also suited to this particular segment of consumer.
“Our [total addressable market isn’t just Hispanics,” Zunzunegui said. “Our ambition is to be one of the top three financial entities in every market that we operate, and we realize that for that, we need to have product parity across all verticals with our competitive set, which are not only fintechs, but incumbent banks as well.”
And Revolut Business will continue to be a priority in the country. “The U.S. has become one of our top five markets in terms of businesses that are acquiring,” he said.
Taking on the U.S. banking system
Competing in the U.S. will indeed be more difficult than it is across the pond due to the market size, complexity and the sheer number of banks and fintechs that are vying for consumers’ banking business, according to Aaron Press, a research analyst at IDC.
“There are several strategies they could pursue. Given its current U.S. focus on small to medium-sized businesses, it would make sense to continue down that path to become a small to medium-business SMB focused neo-bank, perhaps the business counterpart to Chime’s consumer focus,” Press said. “But it is reasonable to believe that they will pursue a broader set of consumer offerings to match their UK product set. If they can continue to differentiate around global reach and cross-border capabilities, they could carve out a nice niche.”
Securing a bank charter will help open up a “significant” new set of options, including the ability to accept deposits without the involvement of a partner bank. That changes the economics and provides a path to creating a product set that’s on par with what Revolut offers in other markets.
Zunzunegui is hoping that its recent bank charter in the U.K. will help propel its U.S. application forward.
“Having a U.K. banking license, which is where our company and our financial bank is headquartered, does open opportunities from a regulatory standpoint because it’s our market of origin,” he said. “Generally these regulatory bodies look back at your home country where you have a lionshare, and the fact that we’re operational and have more than 13 million customers is seen very positively.”
In other markets, Revolut has logged more traction with retail banking customers after they secure a banking license in the country, Zunzunegui said. “That’s what we’ve seen in Spain. Having a local I-ban really helps people build that confidence that operational friction is taken away from on the day to day.”
Revolut’s earnings
Revolut’s revenue jumped 46% year over year to 4.5 billion pounds ($6 billion), largely because of Revolut Business, which accounted for 16% of the neobank’s total income.
Card payments increased 45% to 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion), and FX increased 43% to 606 million pounds ($800 million). Revenue from its wealth business was up 31% to 663 million pounds ($876 million), and subscription revenue jumped 67% to 708 million pounds ($936 million).
“Unlike many banking traditional banks, most of our revenue is not coming from net interest income,” Zunzunegui said. “In fact, 76% of it is coming from revenue that is fee based, and actually no single line generates more than 23% of our total group revenue.”
Total retail customers worldwide grew 30% year over year to 68.3 million, with customers balances increasing 66%, indicating that existing customers are spending, saving and investing more with the company.
That “shows how sticky Revolut is,” Zunzunegui said.