Today, we're incredibly excited to announce that our application for a European banking licence has been approved by the European Central Bank. As you can imagine, this is a pretty huge milestone for us.

This licence will help us towards our goal to build an account where you can manage every aspect of your financial life, with the best value and using the best available technologies.

Now, it's worth pointing out that nothing is going to change right away. Despite being granted with a licence, this does not automatically turn us into a bank right away.

In the coming months, we'll be doing a lot of building and testing behind the scenes, and working closely with the regulators to have any restrictions on our licence removed, so that we can launch full current accounts, overdrafts and everything else you'd expect from a bank.

Your money will be protected 🔐

If you choose to open a full current account with Revolut Bank in the future, any funds you deposit will be protected up to €100,000 under the European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS).

It's worth pointing out that this scheme is not currently in place, so your current funds with Revolut remain safeguarded in accounts with a tier one UK bank, as per our obligations under the e-money regulations.

Overdrafts and personal loans 💸

Once operational our banking licence will allow Revolut users access to overdraft facilities and personal loans. This means you’ll no longer have to deal with negative balances, automatic top-ups and the all-annoying ‘insufficient funds’ notification.

What's more, the competitive personal loans we plan to offer will help out when your budget can’t cover a bigger purchase, when you want to book that long-overdue holiday, or for anything else that requires a small cash injection before your next payday.

Direct debits ⚡

While Direct Debits are already in place for our European customers, once we have our full current accounts in place, Revolut Bank will support UK Direct Debit, for paying anything from your gym membership to your electricity bill.

In-house payment processing 🔧

As announced earlier in the year, we're making solid progress in building our in-house payment processor, and will look to have this in place as we begin to launch Revolut Bank. This should drastically eliminate any service disruption as we scale to tens of millions of customers.

When is it all kicking off ⏰

We'll start by testing the new licence in Lithuania next year and once we're happy that everything is running smoothly, we'll look to expand into other European markets later in the year.

We'll aim to implement the banking licence as transparently as possible, so that you can track our progress and find the answers to your questions. For now, we would just like to thank each and every person who has backed us in our journey. Make no mistake, the next 18 months will be game-changing!

Get the app 📲