While Storonsky leads a fintech company, his ethos aligns more with Big Tech than financial services. His revenue target is absurd for a consumer oriented financial services company that is barely a decade old. Bank of America had about US$98.5 billion in revenue in 2023, while Citigroup had US$78.5 billion. Consider that both BOA and Citi are more than 100 years old, and did not achieve such high revenue until recently.

Storonsky is trying to position Revolut as an ascendant tech giant, which would make his ambitious revenue target more feasible. Companies like Amazon, Apple and Google have grown exponentially over the past decade. He has been focused on building out the Revolut ecosystem to make it a super app – a digital financial services platform which its customers use for everything from everyday banking and payments to stock and crypto trading. The idea is for Revolut to be dominant in digital financial services in many markets.

We think Revolut’s prospects in Europe, both the continent and UK, are good. This is where the Revolut brand is best known, and where the digital competition is arguably the least formidable. In Asia Pacific, Revolut faces more formidable competitors, and simply lacks the ability to quickly penetrate the largest emerging markets like China, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. If you look past Revolut’s PR machine, you will find that its reach in APAC is strongest in the Anglosphere – Australia and New Zealand. Otherwise, it is not a big player.

We expect that Revolut’s prospects will hinge to some extent on if it can win a banking license in the United States. Without the banking license, Revolut cannot achieve significant scale in the U.S. market, where it faces formidable native digital competitors like Chime. It has been interested in applying for a U.S. banking license since at least late 2020, but it is unclear why the fintech unicorn did not pursue the process.

Storonsky has noted that the U.S. market is credit card-driven and it’s hard to compete without that option, and its ability to earn interchange fees. “In the U.S., you need to be credit driven. So in the U.S., we need to have a banking license to launch a product,” he told investors in Helsinki.