Revolut is remaining tight-lipped on where it’s at in the process of obtaining banking registration from the Reserve Bank, a process the British-headquartered fintech began in 2024.
“It is a really important focus area for us,” Revolut’s head of New Zealand Georgia Grange told interest.co.nz this week.
“We can't comment on specific timelines for the RBNZ, but [...] it hasn't slowed down in momentum to date with regards to our licensing, nor do we expect it to change,” she said.
“The reason that it's so important to us is not only to help go head-to-head [with the banks], but the customer trust that comes with that licence and being held to that highest standard,” she said.
Revolut doesn’t have any interest in partnering Revolut's products with an established bank, either.
“Technically speaking, there are other avenues you can [go down], but we would prefer to do it ourselves and on our own back,” Grange said.
The last bank to receive banking registration from the Reserve Bank was the Bank of China in 2018, the third of China's big four government-controlled banks to have gained Reserve Bank approval to register as a bank in NZ.
Receiving banking registration would mean Revolut could launch financial products that they can’t offer without it, like interest-bearing savings accounts and lending products.
“Nothing's off the table for sure,” Grange said when asked if Revolut would want to tap into the housing market if it received banking registration. But she sees more potential in the business lending market for Revolut.
“So many businesses struggle to get the lending they need to help them grow and when they do get it, it's at astronomical rates,” she said.
“We're hearing of many businesses getting turned down for lending with no good reason. Sometimes it's purely because the banks have a two-year backlog of applications to review that they just say no.”
“We definitely see that as an untapped area. But it's definitely not confirmed whether or not we're doing it. I know it's a problem that one day would be great to help solve.”
Revolut launched in NZ in July 2023, with one employee, Grange, and a waitlist of 26,000.
Three years later, the fintech’s NZ team is up to 35, with plans to grow to 90 by the end of the 2026 financial year, has rolled out over 20 financial products and has more than 100,000 users. Revolut handled over 6.5 million transactions in NZ in the 2025 financial year.
The fintech plans to spend $120 million over the next five years on growing its NZ operation across different business facets, including products, people and marketing.
It recently launched Revolut Business, a dedicated platform for NZ businesses to manage functions like payroll, cards and expense management within a single system.
According to Companies House filings in the UK, Revolut reported £3.3 billion in global revenue and a before-tax global profit of £1.4 billion in the 12 months to 31 December 2025. Global net profit for the year to 31 December 2025 came to £1.1 billion.
Revolut was founded by Chief Executive Nikolay Storonsky — a former Lehman Brothers trader – and Vlad Yatsenko in 2015. It now has 75 million customers globally across 160 countries and regions who make more than one billion transactions every month.
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