British digital bank Revolut has secured a full French banking licence, giving it a second banking base inside the European Union and a foothold in the eurozone’s second-largest economy. The authorisation for its subsidiary Revolut Bank SA followed a joint assessment by France’s Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR) and the European Central Bank, with the decision adopted by the ECB Governing Council.
The French entity will operate alongside Revolut Bank UAB in Lithuania under what the company described as a dual-hub model. Both are supervised by their national regulator and the ECB.
Revolut said it would move French customers to the new entity first, with Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain following in phases. Lithuania remains the base for the rest of the European Economic Area.
Until now the group has served EU customers by passporting its Lithuanian licence, one of the workarounds British financial firms adopted after Brexit. That arrangement made it harder to sell locally regulated products such as French savings accounts and mortgages.
Founder and chief executive Nik Storonsky said France offered “the ideal platform to accelerate Revolut’s next phase of growth”. Béatrice Cossa-Dumurgier, chief executive for western Europe, said attention now turned to execution.
The company has pledged more than €1 billion for the region and is recruiting more than 600 staff. It plans to open its western Europe headquarters in Paris in 2027, having signed a 10-year lease in the city’s Bourse district.
The announcement made no reference to supervisory restrictions. Bloomberg reported on July 21 that the French entity was likely to launch with limits on new products and lending similar to those already applied to the Lithuanian unit.
The ECB curbed product launches at Revolut Bank UAB last year after identifying deficiencies in its approval processes, according to the Financial Times. The company has said it remains in regular dialogue with its supervisors.
Founded in 2015, Revolut has about 30 million customers in western Europe and more than 75 million worldwide. It built its business on smartphone currency exchange and transfers before expanding into lending, savings and cryptocurrency.
The group won a full UK banking licence in March after a long wait and is seeking a national bank charter in the United States. A secondary share sale in July valued it at $115 billion (€99.5 billion), above the market capitalisation of several listed European banks.
Its growth has also drawn criticism over its ability to meet financial crime rules, particularly those covering fraud and money laundering. Storonsky said in April that a stock market listing was at least two years away.
