10 August 2026
Revolut has cleared a major regulatory milestone in its European expansion. Its French subsidiary, Revolut Bank S.A. (RBSA), has been granted a full banking licence following a joint assessment by France's Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR) and the European Central Bank, with the decision formally adopted by the ECB's Governing Council.
A second hub for Western Europe
The licence is more than a regulatory formality — it establishes France as a second banking pillar for the group, alongside its long-standing Lithuanian entity, Revolut Bank UAB, which will continue to serve the rest of the European Economic Area. Both entities will remain supervised by their respective local regulators as well as the ECB, under what Revolut describes as a "dual-hub model" built to support its continent-wide scale.
Paris is not a random choice: the group will open its new Western European headquarters there in 2027, led by Frédéric Oudéa (Chairman of RBSA's Board) and Béatrice Cossa-Dumurgier (CEO Western Europe). Revolut has also committed to investing over €1 billion in the region and creating more than 600 jobs.
An already-massive customer base
The numbers underline the scale of the ambition. Revolut now counts over 75 million customers globally, including around 30 million in Western Europe — a region where close to 8 million new users joined in the past year alone. Revolut Business, the company's SME and enterprise arm, now serves hundreds of thousands of companies, from freelancers to large corporations.
A phased rollout
In practice, Revolut Bank S.A. will start by serving French customers before progressively expanding to other Western European markets — Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain are named as the next phases. The stated goal is twofold: reinforce regulatory compliance while accelerating product localisation market by market.
What it means for the neobank landscape
For a company that built its growth on tech-driven agility, securing a full banking licence in France — on top of its existing one in Lithuania — sends a clear signal: Revolut is no longer positioning itself purely as a fintech challenger, but is actively pushing to become a full-fledged bank at European scale. Founder and CEO Nik Storonsky put the ambition plainly, framing the goal as becoming one of Europe's largest and most trusted banks.
For markets adjacent to Switzerland, which falls outside this licence (Revolut operates there under a different regime, outside the eurozone), the announcement is still a meaningful signal of the group's trajectory — and of the growing competitive pressure it's putting on both traditional banks and other European neobanks.