Revolut Hits $115 Billion Valuation as US Banking Licence Nears Deployment

A Secondary Round That Signals Primary Ambitions

Revolut closed a secondary share sale in early November that assigned the British financial-technology platform a valuation of $115 billion, according to the company. That figure represents a 53 per cent increase over the $75 billion price tag investors placed on the business in a similar employee-and-early-backer liquidity event a year earlier. Glade Brook Capital Partners, Coatue, Durable Capital Partners, T. Rowe Price Associates and Baillie Gifford bought the shares; Revolut itself received no new capital and declined to disclose the volume of stock that changed hands.

The jump in paper value arrives as the London-headquartered firm moves closer to launching a national bank in the United States. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted Revolut conditional approval in 2026; the company now expects to open for US deposit-taking business in the first half of 2027, pending final sign-off from federal regulators. For a platform that began in 2015 as a peer-to-peer currency-exchange app built by Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, the American banking licence represents both a regulatory milestone and a commercial bet that its formula can work inside the world's largest financial market.

At Opentechwire, we have tracked the fintech's expansion across three continents over the past eighteen months. The pace is unusual: Revolut switched on retail banks in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand during 2026, secured licences in France, Colombia and Argentina, and began onboarding customers in India. The company now claims more than 80 million retail users across more than 40 countries, a footprint that straddles high-income and middle-income economies in roughly equal measure.

Business Banking Becomes a Profit Engine

Revolut Business, the corporate arm launched in 2017, has evolved from a side experiment into a material revenue driver. James Gibson, who leads the division and holds a partner title at the firm, told the company's investor relations team that business clients now account for roughly 20 per cent of group gross profit. The unit processes transactions worth more than £36 billion each month, equivalent to approximately $48.6 billion, including over £1 billion in monthly US volume despite operating there without a full banking charter until now.

Annualised revenue from Revolut Business exceeds £950 million, or about $1.28 billion, and the division holds £18 billion in customer deposits. Those figures place the corporate product on a run rate that rivals some mid-tier European challenger banks in their entirety. The service is live across Europe, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, offering multi-currency accounts, payment rails, expense cards and basic treasury functions that appeal to start-ups and small enterprises with cross-border operations.

Gibson noted that close to half of new US business sign-ups are recently incorporated companies, a cohort that typically opens its first bank account within weeks of formation and exhibits high lifetime engagement. Revolut is positioning the product as an operating account rather than a simple payment overlay, a strategy that increases deposit stickiness and fee income. The division aims to grow its customer base from the current 800,000 businesses to one million by the end of 2027, a target that implies net additions of roughly 16,000 accounts each month for the next fifteen months.

The company intends to bring business banking to Mexico, Brazil and India, though Gibson offered no firm launch dates. Each market presents distinct challenges: Mexico and Brazil demand local compliance infrastructure and integration with domestic instant-payment schemes, while India's regulatory framework for foreign fintechs remains in flux. The funding rounds we have followed across the region suggest that local challengers in those markets are raising capital at a faster clip than twelve months ago, which will compress Revolut's window for easy customer acquisition.

Profitability at Scale

Revolut reported revenue of $6 billion and an operating profit margin of 38 per cent for the year ended December 2025. Those economics stand in contrast to the subsidy-heavy models that defined the previous generation of neo-banks; Revolut charges interchange fees, foreign-exchange spreads, subscription tiers and lending interest, a diversified revenue mix that insulates the platform from single-point regulatory risk. The margin figure also reflects the company's shift toward owned banking licences, which eliminate the need to share economics with partner banks and allow Revolut to hold customer deposits on its own balance sheet.

The profitability trajectory has made a public listing viable. Storonsky has discussed a dual listing in New York and London, with a preference for a primary quotation in the United States. Market speculation has circulated a potential initial public offering valuation in the region of $200 billion, though the company has indicated that any flotation would occur no earlier than 2028 and would depend on equity-market conditions at the time. A listing at that level would position Revolut among the ten largest financial-services companies by market capitalisation in Europe, ahead of several incumbent universal banks.

The US Licence and Its Implications

Conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency allows Revolut to establish a national bank that can accept deposits, make loans and operate across all fifty states under a single federal charter. The structure bypasses the state-by-state licensing process that has slowed other fintech entrants and provides access to Federal Reserve payment systems, including FedNow for real-time settlement. It also subjects Revolut to the capital, liquidity and examination standards that apply to traditional banks, a regulatory burden the company has accepted in exchange for strategic flexibility.

Revolut has operated in the United States since 2020 under state money-transmitter licences, offering currency exchange, stock trading and cryptocurrency transactions but not deposit accounts. The national bank will permit the firm to offer interest-bearing accounts, direct deposit, cheque clearing and credit products, completing the product suite that has driven growth in Europe. The US market currently contributes about $1.35 billion in monthly business-banking transaction volume; retail deposits are likely to exceed that figure once the bank opens, given the higher account balances typical of American consumers.

The timing of the launch coincides with a broader regulatory recalibration in Washington. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has approved three fintech bank charters in the past eighteen months, a faster pace than the previous five years combined, signalling a willingness to integrate technology-native players into the supervised banking system rather than confine them to the shadow-banking perimeter. That shift reduces the structural advantage that incumbents have enjoyed and raises the competitive stakes for deposit-gathering and payments.

Valuation in Context

A $115 billion valuation places Revolut behind only a handful of private technology companies globally. The figure exceeds the market capitalisation of Barclays, one of the United Kingdom's four systemic banks, and sits within striking distance of Standard Chartered. Comparisons to incumbent banks are imperfect; Revolut's balance sheet is smaller, its credit exposure narrower and its regulatory obligations lighter, even with the pending US charter. Yet the valuation reflects investor confidence that the platform can capture a disproportionate share of account openings among younger cohorts and cross-border households, segments that generate lower cost-to-serve and higher product attachment than traditional depositors.

Secondary share sales offer liquidity to employees and early investors without the disclosure obligations of a public listing, but they also establish a reference price that shapes future fundraising and acquisition discussions. The 53 per cent year-on-year increase in valuation outpaced the growth rates of most publicly traded payment companies over the same period, suggesting that private-market investors are pricing in both the US expansion and the continued scaling of business banking. Whether public-market investors will assign a similar multiple in 2028 or beyond will depend on Revolut's ability to defend margins as it moves into more competitive and less familiar markets.

What Comes Next

Revolut's trajectory over the next two years hinges on three variables: the speed with which it can onboard US retail and business deposits after the national bank opens, the success of its business-banking push into Latin America and India, and the stability of its cost structure as regulatory and compliance overhead rises. The company has demonstrated an ability to move faster than most incumbents, but it now operates in markets where local challengers have home advantage and where regulators are less familiar with its model.

The secondary valuation provides a data point, not a guarantee. If Revolut can translate its European playbook into sustained deposit growth and cross-sell in the United States, the $200 billion initial public offering price that has circulated in speculation may prove conservative. If the US launch encounters friction or if business-banking expansion stalls, the 53 per cent gain recorded in this round may mark a high-water mark rather than a waypoint. The next twelve months will clarify which scenario is unfolding.