Revolut has been granted a French banking licence as the fintech giant seeks to accelerate its European expansion.
The authorisation came from a joint assessment by the French regulators and the European Central Bank.
It forms part of Revolut’s investment of over €1bn in Western Europe. In April, the company signed a 10-year lease for its Western Europe headquarters in Paris that will open early next year and occupy 2,417 square metres of office space across six floors.
The London-based fintech is also hiring more than 600 people across markets in Western Europe.
The new licence will allow Revolut to offer a wider selection of loans, mortgages and savings products to its customers.
“France has become a leading financial hub, supported by a dynamic financial ecosystem and a robust regulatory framework,” said cofounder and CEO Nik Storonsky. “It is the ideal platform to accelerate Revolut's next phase of growth — bringing us one step closer to our ambition of becoming one of Europe's largest and most trusted banks."
Revolut was previously granted a European banking licence from the Lithuanian watchdog in 2018, which oversees the fintech alongside the ECB.
The fintech’s French entity will serve customers in France, with Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain to follow. Its Lithuanian entity serves the rest of the European Economic Area (EEA).
The “dual-hub” model is aimed at supporting Revolut's scale across the continent with both entities supervised by their local authority and the ECB.
This follows reports in June that the ECB placed restrictions on Revolut’s European business last year, citing concerns about risks in its product approval process. The fintech was said to be unable to release new products in the EEA last summer until it fixed "deficiencies” in the processes.
