Revolut Secures French Banking Licence, Plans €1 Billion Investment and 600 Jobs in Western Europe

On 10 August 2026, Revolut's French subsidiary Revolut Bank S.A. (RBSA) was granted a full banking licence by the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR) and the European Central Bank (ECB) . This is a major strategic milestone.

Investment and hiring plans in Western Europe

Revolut has committed to investing more than €1 billion in Western Europe, its fastest-growing region, and plans to hire more than 600 staff across the region, including 400 employees in France alone .

Relationship to the 2025 ECB restrictions

In July 2025, the ECB imposed temporary restrictions on Revolut's European arm, telling it to stop launching new products across the European Economic Area (EEA) after finding weaknesses in how the company approved them. The curbs also covered acquisitions and onboarding of certain customers . These restrictions were never publicly lifted and remain an open regulatory constraint; the announcement of the French licence made no reference to them having been resolved . The French licence arrived alongside that unresolved backdrop — some analysts had expected the French entity to come with similar product-level restrictions .

Existing Lithuanian licence — dual-hub model

Revolut already holds an EU banking licence via its Lithuanian entity, Revolut Bank UAB, and had been "passporting" that licence across the EEA for cross-border services . The French licence does not replace it. The company described the setup as a dual-hub model, with both entities supervised by their national regulator and the ECB in parallel . The French licence additionally allows Revolut to offer locally tailored services such as loans and regulated savings products that passporting alone did not enable .

UK and US banking licence applications

• UK: Revolut secured its full UK banking licence on 11 March 2026 after a multi-year wait with the PRA and FCA. It is now shifting over 13 million UK customers onto its own banking books .
• US: Revolut applied for a US national bank charter in March 2026, filing with the OCC and FDIC for a de novo charter as Revolut Bank US, N.A., committing $500 million to the US market. That application is still pending .

Valuation and customer base

Revolut was valued at $75 billion in a November 2024 secondary share sale . It reported over 50 million customers globally as of early 2026, of which more than 13 million are in the UK .

CEO Nik Storonsky's rationale for choosing France

Storonsky described France as becoming "a core hub for our global growth" and the licence as a "first-class regulatory platform" from which Revolut can scale across Europe . He noted that France's regulatory framework under the ACPR and the ECB provides the rigour needed to offer more sophisticated banking products — loans, regulated savings, and local-currency services — to customers in Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, who will gradually be migrated onto the French entity .