FinTech Revolut Eyes Japanese Expansion

British FinTech startup Revolut is looking at Asia to continue its rapid growth.

Revolut has 25 million customers — primarily in Europe — and aims to quadruple that number in three years, Bloomberg reported Tuesday (Nov. 29).

To help it reach that target, it’s looking to the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. Revolut is already operating in Japan, Australia and Singapore. It is now looking at expanding into New Zealand, India and the Philippines, as well as growing its users in Japan from 80,000 to 1 million, according to the report.

“From a competition point of view, Japan’s a very attractive market,” Revolut Founder and CEO Nik Storonsky told Bloomberg in an interview, adding that the country’s banks don’t provide modern services.

The share of cashless transactions is only 30% in Japan, while it’s 94% in South Korea and 56% in the United States, according to the report.

Across Asia, the company aims to boost its user count from 600,000 to at least 10 million by the end of 2025, the report said.

At the same time, Revolut has been scrutinized by regulators in Japan, where the country’s Financial Services Agency imposed a business improvement order on Revolut’s local unit after the unit outsourced some services and could not provide oversight, according to the report.

“Every single country was quite ad hoc. And when things are ad hoc, certain things are being missed,” Storonsky said, per the report. “But now, launching in a country is a much more robust process.”

As PYMNTS reported in July — when Revolut reached 20 million customers — the company was founded in 2015, offers services in 36 countries, and now provides money transfers, peer-to-peer payments, savings, investments and trading. The company recently started offering on-demand pay in the United Kingdom and personalized loans in Ireland.