Challenger bank Revolut has applied for a full banking licence in the US, filing a draft application with the FDIC and California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which would allow the startup to expand its services across all 50 states.
In an effort to capitalise on the country’s switch to online financial services, the company aims to provide products such as loans and deposit accounts as well as business banking alongside its basic services – which it launched in the US a year ago.
To add on, this license would allow Revolut to offer its American customers “all the essential financial products and services they can expect from their primary bank,” Revolut co-founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky said.
“We’re on a mission to build the world’s first global financial super-app, and pursuing a US banking license is an integral part of the journey.”
With 200,000 clients in the US already, the firm aims to hit a million, it said.
“Small and medium-sized businesses are massively underserved in the US, and we want to empower them with the tools to grow and scale globally,” Storonsky added. “Tackling fragmented processes, high fees, and other business banking pain points, we built an end-to-end solution that saves business owners time and resources to focus on what really matters – running their business.”
The digital bank is continually seeking to add to its portfolio of financial licences in the UK and EU. Revolut secured a Lithuanian banking licence bank in 2018 and applied for a UK licence in January this year – five years after operating in the UK.
Since its launch in 2015, Revolut has raised nearly $1bn in investments and was valued at $5.5bn. To date, Revolut has amassed over 15 million customers across nearly 40 different countries and is launching them in ten more countries across Europe.
The neobank is not the only one to go across the pond. Revolut’s UK rival Monzo too applied for its US banking licence 11 months ago.
This new move comes less than a week after the company said it was suspending operations in Canada. Revolut said it “hoped to be able to bring Canada the full Revolut service, but that is not possible at the moment.
“We think it’s in the best interests of our customers to pause for now, and we hope in the future we’ll be able to return to Canada when we can offer the full suite of Revolut services.”
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