Revolut proves the doubters wrong — $115 billion and grateful for the rules

Revolut’s meteoric rise has become one of fintech’s most remarkable success stories, but its journey hasn’t been without friction. As the company races toward a staggering $115 billion valuation, questions linger over the role regulation has played in shaping its success. Has strict oversight slowed innovation, or has it quietly protected customers, investors and the company itself from costly mistakes? This article explores how one of Europe’s fastest-growing financial firms navigated explosive expansion, regulatory scrutiny and operational challenges to emerge stronger than ever. The answer may challenge long-held assumptions about the relationship between innovation, growth and regulation..By Paul J. Davies.Founders and venture capitalists love to moan about being stymied by risk-averse rules and regulators in the UK and Europe. Their ambitions get frustrated, investors are put off and the result is less innovation and slower growth, goes the argument. But then there’s Revolut Ltd.The UK-based fintech has had plenty of gripes in the past about being held back, but to me it looks like a perfect example of the system working well for everyone involved — the fast-growing and disruptive firm itself, its customers and, ultimately, its financial backers.The payments-and-banking app is preparing a private secondary share sale at a valuation of $115 billion, according to Bloomberg News, which is more than 50% higher than the $75 billion it was worth just over six months ago. In that time, it has been adding about 2 million new customers each month in some 40 countries, while increasing revenue and lending rapidly. Nik Storonsky, its Russia-born founder, has a stake worth close to $20 billion; that’s about to become at least $36 billion if the planned share sale goes ahead.Perhaps Revolut has managed this against the odds and in spite of the wet blanket of regulatory caution. It’s just over a decade old and, while it got a European banking license through Latvia early on, it has taken five years to complete the process of getting a full UK banking license. The waiting time in India was similar.And yet, over the past five years its net revenue (as a traditional bank would measure it) has still grown by almost tenfold and the company has been launching new products at a blistering pace. As JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon put it: “I’m jealous, damn it. You watch these people, they move.”.New functions are added so often and with so light a managerial touch that the European Central Bank last summer forced Revolut to pause briefly to ensure that it had enough internal oversight of what its people were up to, according to the Financial Times. That to me doesn’t seem like fuddy duddies struggling to keep up with innovation; it seems a sensible way to ensure that entrepreneurial zeal doesn’t dissolve into unbridled chaos.After all, Revolut, like most of its fintech peers, has had its share of teething troubles. Its financial reporting and money laundering controls have had to be beefed up as its growth made watchdogs uneasy about whether the firm really knew who many of its customers were and why they were sending money across borders. In 2023, it revealed a $20 million loss from flaws in its US operations that allowed hackers to drain funds from its payments system. It also had to invest heavily in fraud-prevention staff and technology following a flood of problems for UK customers in 2024.Finance is heavily regulated for reasons few would question: We don’t want drug dealers or terrorists moving money freely around the world; nor do we want people easily losing cash to criminals and scams. Any bank of significant size that isn’t working hard to prevent fraud and money laundering risks going out of business and thereby undermining trust in the wider system.Storonsky himself admitted in 2024 that he got it wrong on trying to avoid regulation in the early days, because it would have been simpler to win the appropriate licenses when Revolut was smaller. “When you have 10 million, 20 million, or 50 million customers, every regulator scrutinizes you a lot before giving the license,” he said. “But if you only have 100,000 customers it’s much easier for them to give you the license because it’s less risky.” Nowadays he’s trimmed his hair and wears a suit more regularly.But even with such constraints, Revolut keeps posting numbers to make almost any tech company jealous, let alone a traditional bricks-and-mortar lender. Its total deposits of £37 billion ($50 billion) at the end of 2025 were up more than 60% over the year. It more than doubled lending last year to £2.2 billion without any visible increase (yet) in credit risk as it moved into mortgages alongside credit cards.Its worldwide customer base of roughly 75 million exceeds that of Barclays Plc by more than 20 million. Revolut’s small loan book and the more limited services many customers use mean they bring in less money than Barclays gets from its clients – for now. But the speed of growth and the promise of selling more services to more people later are what drives its valuation. If its upcoming share sale is a success, Revolut will be worth about one-third more than Barclays — which traces its origins back to 1690 — is today..Revolut’s goal is 100 million customers who use it daily in 100 countries in the next couple of years. It’s also expected to seek a stock-market listing at a value of between $150 billion to $200 billion, possibly as soon as 2028, according to multiple media reports including this from Bloomberg News. Storonsky’s stake would then be worth nearly $80 billion.Watchdogs aren’t trying to stop it getting there – quite the reverse, they’re trying to ensure it’s a sound and durable financial firm when it does. The kinds of standards Revolut has to meet as it grows are there to ensure competition in finance is healthy and not toxic. And those robust rules, while always costly, are also a protective moat against future competitors.Investors should be thankful for the strictness of the regime for reducing the chances of catastrophic missteps or a fatal loss of trust in their company further down the road — as well as protecting their huge investment returns..© 2026 Bloomberg L.P..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. 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Revolut proves the doubters wrong — $115 billion and grateful for the rules

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