Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Revolut has grown from a startup promising cheaper currency exchange fees into Europe’s most valuable private company, now valued at $115 billion, a sum that puts it ahead of established lenders including Barclays and Societe Generale.
The company’s 80 million customers, according to its own figures, put it within striking distance of JPMorgan’s 84 million and well past HSBC’s 41 million, a remarkable scale for a fintech that only launched just over a decade ago. CEO Nik Storonsky has made clear he isn’t satisfied with Europe alone, pushing Revolut’s expansion into markets from Mexico to Australia and securing several new banking licenses in recent weeks as part of that global push, including a provisional license in the US.
“When you go to Europe the bank CEOs there are talking about Revolut as their most important threat because of their aggressive marketing and growth,” said Cihan Duran, a director at S&P Global Ratings, capturing how seriously traditional lenders now take the fintech’s momentum.
The financial numbers tell a more complicated story than the valuation alone suggests. Revolut’s 2025 pretax profit came in at £1.7 billion, growing fast but still a fraction of Barclays’ £9 billion. The company also makes far less revenue from each customer than traditional banks do, and its lending business remains comparatively tiny: with just £2.2 billion in loans at the end of 2025, Revolut’s loan-to-deposit ratio sits at 6%, compared with 55% at HSBC and 86% at Societe Generale.
A Revolut spokesperson framed that gap as a deliberate strategic choice rather than a weakness: “That means our growth depends on building things customers value, rather than on interest rates.” Whether that bet pays off against banks with centuries of lending infrastructure and far deeper balance sheets is likely to determine whether Revolut’s valuation can hold, let alone grow further, as it pushes into new markets around the world.
