A new deal with Visa will see challenger bank Revolut hire 3,500 new staff members to power a push into 24 new markets, including several in Latin America.
The two companies announced the deal on Monday, Reuters reports. The two finance companies have worked together before and this new deal will expand their partnership. It will see the digital-only bank first expand into eight new countries, including the US, Russia, Japan and Brazil, at the end of 2019 and will then push further into Asia and Latin America.
It will also see the number of employees at Revolut jump from the current 1,500 to 5,000 within the next year, according to the founder Nikolay Storonsky.
While the deal is not exclusive, 75% of the cards issued by Revolut will be Visa cards rather than that of Mastercard’s or other rivals.
Revolut and Visa are only the latest companies to show interest in the Latin American market. For instance, Goldman Sachs announced that it was betting on the Mexican FinTech company Konfio in September. The $100m credit facility was not the first time the investment bank had backed in a Latin America new venture. It had previously loaned the Brazilian challenger bank Nubank about $49m in 2016.
Overall, interest in the southern American hemisphere is rising. Since 2014, there has been over 464 investment deals into its FinTech sector, representing total of more than $3.7bn, according to FinTech Global’s own research. In 2014, the FinTech sector attracted $89.8m worth of investment. By 2018, that figure jumped to $671m only to then skyrocket to $2.15bn in the first six months of 2019.
The news about Revolut’s expansion comes after a busy month for the digital-only bank. In September alone, Revolut picked BearingPoint RegTech as the solutions provider that would help it comply with regulations after Brexit and Revolut also announced it would open a new centre in Portugal.
