Revolut lands a French banking licence and a Paris base for Western Europe

Revolut has secured a full French banking licence, a milestone that turns the fintech from a payments app into a proper bank across Western Europe’s biggest markets.

The approval, granted by France’s ACPR and the European Central Bank, covers a new entity, Revolut Bank S.A.

Crucially, this is Revolut’s second full banking licence in the EU. Until now the company ran its European banking through a single Lithuanian entity, so adding France gives it a genuine dual-hub structure and reduces its reliance on one small member state for the whole bloc.

France was chosen for reasons of both prestige and pragmatism. Revolut is planting its Western European headquarters in Paris from 2027, casting the country’s deep financial ecosystem and sturdy regulation as the right foundation for the next phase of its growth.

The commitment comes with real money attached. Revolut has pledged to invest more than €1bn in Western Europe and to hire over 600 people across the region, a statement of intent that goes well beyond a regulatory box-ticking exercise.

The scale of its customer base explains the ambition. Revolut counts 30 million customers across Western Europe, eight million of whom joined in 2025 alone, out of some 75 million worldwide, so the licence is about serving an audience it has already won rather than chasing one it lacks.

What the licence actually unlocks is the ability to lend. As a fully fledged bank, Revolut can now offer credit, deposits and, over time, products like mortgages and regulated savings accounts, moving decisively past the payment-institution limits it had operated under in France.

That matters because lending is the part of banking Revolut has barely touched. The company has made most of its money from fees and trading rather than from loans, so a licence that lets it lend at scale is a chance to build the steadier, interest-based income that real banks rely on.

It is also a competitive necessity. Revolut has long looked like a bank to its users without offering the mortgages and long-term savings that anchor a customer’s financial life, and closing that gap is how it keeps people from drifting to an incumbent when they buy a home or plan for the future.

There is a catch, though, and it is a familiar one. The ECB has attached conditions that mirror the constraints on Revolut’s Lithuanian arm, so the rollout of mortgages and savings products is expected to be gradual rather than immediate.

France will be the proving ground. The company plans to serve French customers first, migrating them to the new entity before expanding across markets like Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, with Lithuania staying on as the hub for the wider European Economic Area.

The French win fits a striking pattern of licence-gathering. Revolut has spent the past year collecting the permits it long lacked, finally winning a UK banking licence after a drawn-out wait, a reminder that regulators do not always move at fintech speed.

Its reach now spans continents. Revolut has also picked up an Australian banking licence, its first in Asia-Pacific, and the same announcement confirmed a valuation that had leapt to $115bn, cementing its status as Europe’s most valuable private tech firm.

The United States is next on the list. Revolut has applied for a US bank charter, part of a deliberate strategy to hold real banking licences in every major market rather than lean on local partners.

All of it points toward a blockbuster listing. Revolut’s IPO is expected in a couple of years and likely in the US, and a thicket of banking licences is exactly the kind of credential that supports a valuation running into the hundreds of billions.

For now, the French licence is both a trophy and a to-do list. Founder Nik Storonsky called it the foundation for building the next generation of banking in Western Europe, while the region’s chief, Béatrice Cossa-Dumurgier, was blunter: the focus, she said, now turns to execution.