Revolut Increases Focus on UK Credit Card Market

Revolut plans to launch five credit cards in the United Kingdom, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (June 4).

“Credit cards [are] something that we are passionate about,” Revolut U.K. CEO Francesca Carlesi said at the Money 20/20 conference in Amsterdam Thursday, per the report. “It’s going to go live soon.”

The London-based digital bank has focused on lending since landing a full banking license in its home country in March, the report said.

While Revolut’s banking license in the U.K. lets the FinTech “broaden out” its offerings and introduce new products, it can also help foster trust among customers, Carlesi said, per the report.

She added that Revolut is also looking into personal loans and is particularly interested in wealth management, according to the report.

“The legacy banks have historically been under-serving a lot of very important customers and products,” Carlesi said, per the report. “I think if you go at [a] granular level by product by segment, there is lots of untapped potential, and we want to be there because these are great customers, and they deserve the same high-quality service that any other customer has.”

Many firms are making it harder to qualify for wealth management services, according to the report, and Carlesi said Revolut wants to target people who have wealth but still don’t make the cut.

Meanwhile, the company last month won regulatory permission from the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority to expand the scope of its trading business.

This will let Revolut Trading bring “investment, advisory and portfolio management under one roof,” Victoria Laffey, the unit’s head of operations, said in a news release.

The approval will help Revolut combine more sophisticated wealth management with the company’s banking and payment services.

It was reported the same day that Revolut wants to launch private banking services this year for clients with at least 500,000 pounds (about $672,000) to deposit.

Additionally, Revolut plans to include stablecoins as part of its banking offering in the United States. Revolut applied for a U.S. banking charter in March.