Revolut Has a Banking Licence, $9 Billion in Projected Revenue and 65 Million Customers. The IPO Is the Only Question Left.

Brief Analysis

On 11 March 2026, Revolut received its full UK banking licence from the Prudential Regulation Authority — ending a three-year application process and transforming the London-founded fintech from a payments platform into a fully regulated bank. The company reported revenue of £4.5 billion in 2025, up 46% year on year, with its loans portfolio growing 120% to £2.2 billion. Its most recent secondary share sale in November 2025 valued the business at $75 billion — alongside established institutions such as Barclays and Société Générale. Founder and CEO Nik Storonsky is personally sitting on a 29% stake in a company projecting $9 billion in revenue and $3.5 billion in profit for 2026. The IPO, when it comes, will be the defining European capital markets event of the decade — and the question is no longer whether it happens but where it lists and at what price.

EBM Exclusive Take

Revolut’s banking licence is not merely a regulatory milestone — it is a strategic inflection point that changes the competitive landscape for every incumbent bank operating in the UK and Europe. With lending, mortgages, consumer credit and deposit protection now available under a full banking framework, Revolut can pursue the revenue streams that traditional banks have monopolised for decades. The company’s trajectory — from a currency exchange app launched in 2015 to a $75 billion institution serving 65 million customers across 100 countries — is the most compressed ascent in the history of European financial services. What happens next will determine whether Europe can produce a genuinely global financial institution for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis restructured the continent’s banking sector. The EU’s approach to financial regulation has historically made that ambition harder. Revolut has built it anyway — in London, under British regulation, with a globally distributed customer base that no European bank has come close to matching.

How Revolut Got Here

Revolut was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky, a former Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers trader, and Vlad Yatsenko, a software engineer. The original proposition was simple: a prepaid card that let users spend in foreign currencies at interbank exchange rates with no fees. In an era when high street banks were still charging 3% foreign transaction fees as a matter of routine, it was an immediate hit.

The company scaled at a pace that traditional financial institutions found difficult to comprehend. By 2021 it had 15 million customers and a valuation of $33 billion. By 2024 revenue had reached $4 billion — up 72% year on year — with pre-tax profit of $1.4 billion. By 2025 revenue had grown a further 46% to £4.5 billion, driven by customer fees, an expanded lending portfolio and the rapid growth of its wealth and trading products. Early investors have seen 24 times returns on their original stakes.

The UK banking licence — granted in restricted form in July 2024 and upgraded to full status on 11 March 2026 — was the piece that had been missing. Without it, Revolut’s UK customers were not covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. With it, deposits up to £120,000 are protected, consumer credit services are authorised and the company can compete directly with high street banks for mortgage and lending business.

The Numbers That Matter

The financial picture heading into 2026 is striking. Revolut is projecting $9 billion in revenue and $3.5 billion in profit for the full year — figures that, if achieved, would place it comfortably among the most profitable financial institutions in Europe on a per-employee basis. Its loans portfolio grew 120% in 2025 to £2.2 billion and is accelerating. The company serves 65 million customers across 100 countries and has launched full banking operations in Mexico — its first bank outside Europe — while simultaneously applying for a US banking licence with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The November 2025 secondary share sale — led by Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer and Fidelity, with Andreessen Horowitz, Franklin Templeton and Nvidia’s venture arm NVentures participating — valued the business at $75 billion. That figure already sits alongside Barclays and Société Générale by market capitalisation. The IPO is expected to take that valuation to $100 billion or beyond.

The IPO Question

The listing is coming. The question is when and where. Storonsky has said an IPO is “most likely” two to three years away — a timeline that has drifted repeatedly and should be treated with appropriate scepticism from a founder who has used secondary share sales brilliantly to avoid the scrutiny of public markets while building institutional investor support.

London is not the preferred destination. Storonsky has made clear that a US listing — most likely Nasdaq — is the primary option, even as the company continues to operate from its London base. A dual listing in London and New York has also been discussed, which would make Revolut the first company to join the FTSE 100 while simultaneously listing on a US exchange. Given Revolut’s global customer base and the depth of US institutional appetite for high-growth financial technology, the Nasdaq logic is straightforward.

For European capital markets the implications are uncomfortable. The continent’s most valuable fintech, built in London by a Russian-born founder, projecting revenues that dwarf most European banks, is likely to list in New York. It is a familiar story — and one that European policymakers have consistently failed to reverse.

What Comes After the Licence

The banking licence unlocks revenue streams that were previously inaccessible. Revolut is already in discussions with Blackstone about offering alternative asset funds on its platform — a move that would bring institutional investment products to 65 million retail customers at scale. It has been selected by the FCA to participate in a regulatory sandbox for fiat-pegged stablecoins, positioning it at the intersection of traditional banking and digital assets in a way that no incumbent bank has achieved.

The target of 100 million customers by mid-2027 is ambitious but not implausible given the trajectory. At that scale, with a full banking licence in the UK, a European banking licence already held, and a US licence application in process, Revolut will be operating as a genuinely global bank — something that has not existed in the financial services landscape since before 2008.

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