Revolut Lands French Banking Licence, Will Migrate Customers in Europe’s Biggest Markets
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Revolut has been granted the French banking licence it had been pursuing for years. Following a joint assessment by the French supervisory authority ACPR (Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution) and the European Central Bank, the full banking licence for Revolut Bank S.A. (RBSA) was formally adopted by the ECB’s Governing Council, the company announced in Paris on Monday. It gives the British neobank group a second standalone banking licence within the eurozone for the first time.
For Revolut, this is a regulatory move with strategic weight. Until now, the company has served its EU customers by passporting its Lithuanian banking licence – a model that works across borders but makes it harder to offer local products such as country-specific savings and lending propositions. Western Europe CEO Béatrice Cossa-Dumurgier argued to Reuters in the spring that a local licence was necessary for Revolut to become customers’ primary bank.
“The creation of our second European bank in France is a direct response to our strong growth in Western Europe over the past few years. It brings us even closer to our customers in the region. Our customers can already use instant-access savings accounts and personal loans through Revolut, and we will keep expanding that offering across Europe and globally. In Lithuania, for example, we are currently testing home loans and plan to make this available in further countries in future,” a Revolut spokesperson told Trending Topics.
30 million customers in Western Europe
Around 30 million of Revolut’s more than 75 million users worldwide are in Western Europe, according to the company – almost eight million of them were added in the past year alone. That base is eventually to be served through the new French entity.
The switch will not happen all at once, however. Revolut Bank S.A. will start “gradually”, the announcement says, beginning with customers in France. Further markets are set to follow in later expansion steps; Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain are named. Revolut does not give a timeline for the individual countries.
Lithuania’s Revolut Bank UAB will remain in place and continue to carry the business for the rest of the European Economic Area – meaning it will above all keep serving customers in Central and Eastern Europe. Austria is not among the five markets Revolut names for the move to Paris, so domestic customers will stay with the Lithuanian entity for now, which is supervised by the Bank of Lithuania and the ECB. Revolut describes the setup as a “dual-hub model”; both banks are answerable to their respective national supervisor as well as the ECB.
One billion euros for Western Europe
The licence is part of a wider investment programme. Revolut has pledged to invest more than one billion euros in the region, says it is hiring over 600 staff in Western Europe, and plans to open a new Western European headquarters in Paris in 2027, for which a ten-year lease in the city’s Bourse district has already been signed. The French structure is headed by Cossa-Dumurgier as Western Europe CEO and Frédéric Oudéa, the former Société Générale chief, as chairman of the supervisory board of Revolut Bank S.A.
Founder and CEO Nik Storonsky calls France an “ideal environment” for the next phase of growth in the announcement. Oudéa points to the dialogue with French and European authorities, Cossa-Dumurgier to months of work with the ACPR and the ECB.
Unfinished business in the US
The announcement speaks of banking licences “on both sides of the Atlantic”. In the US, though, the process is not yet complete: in March 2026, Revolut applied to the regulator OCC and deposit insurer FDIC for a charter for a “Revolut Bank US, N.A.” – a procedure that usually takes twelve to 18 months. So far, the US business runs through partner institution Lead Bank. Being regulated in core markets such as France, Germany or the UK is, according to Storonsky, helpful for the US application.
Revolut is currently active in 40 markets and was most recently valued at 115 billion US dollars in a secondary share sale. The stated goal: 100 million customers worldwide by mid-2027. An IPO is expected by observers for late 2026 or 2027.
