The license from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), announced Tuesday (July 21), marks the U.K. FinTech’s official entry into the Asia-Pacific banking space.
It also makes Revolut the first global FinTech granted a full Australian deposit-taking institution (ADI) license from APRA, the company said in a news release.
“Launching our Australian bank has been a long-term strategic priority and marks another significant step in our mission to build the world’s first truly global bank,” said Nik Storonsky, Revolut’s founder and CEO.
“Securing this licence in a market as highly regulated and competitive as Australia is a testament to our business model and our teams.”
The release added that Revolut plans to invest nearly $400 million in Australian dollars ($280) into the local market in the next five years. The license comes on the heels of a series of other recent banking permissions for Revolut, including ones in Mexico, the U.K. and the European Economic Area.
It’s part of a larger expansion plan for Revolut, which last week announced it had received in-principle approval to provide crypto services in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Subject to final regulatory approvals, this license will let Revolut offer broker-dealer, management and investment, and exchange services in the UAE through its retail app and its standalone exchange, RevolutX.
And last month, Bloomberg News reported that the company plans to launch in South Africa by 2028 amid strong local interest in its offering.
“We are already seeing exceptional demand for our product, and our waitlist is fast approaching 100,000 registrations,” Jacques Meyer, head of Revolut’s South African business, told the news outlet.
The company’s expansion ambitions are happening amid a wave of bank charter requests from FinTechs. As PYMNTS reported in March, this year has seen a wave of these companies file for charters with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), to the point that the banking industry was considering legal action.
“Behind the charter race could lie a shift in how financial value is being created,” that report said. “Historically, consumer banking has been dominated by institutions controlling deposits and lending.”
Now, however, digital assets are establishing new layers of financial infrastructure across custody, settlement networks, tokenized securities, and blockchain-based payment rails and the companies overseeing these layers could end up capturing the most value, PYMNTS wrote.
The report also cited PYMNTS Intelligence data showing that 62% of Generation Z consumers would consider using a neobank as their main bank account provider, “a striking level of openness that outpaces all other generations,” as covered here last fall.