The Fintech behemoth has acted in the wake of Brexit ahead of the imminent loss of passporting rights for Europe. It plans to shift all its European payment services from London to Lithuania and Ireland.
The newly appointed CEO, Richard Davies, also said that the company plans to open Revolut card credit offerings later this year. Since it was founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut has rapidly grown. The neo-bank has over 2,000 employees. It will also close a funding round that will push its value to £5bn by mid-February.
Mr. Davies said that the company’s global headquarters would remain in London with the UK payments being managed from there. He said:
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“Strategically for Europe, we are moving to a three-target licensed entity model. We have already got the UK EMI license, and that will continue to serve the UK clients. The strategy is to have our central and eastern European clients on our Lithuanian EMI and bank license. For our western European clients, we are in the process with the Central Bank of Ireland around authorizing there to have western European clients on our Irish license.”
According to the CEO, the strategy of having three regulated Revolut business entities is enormous. The company plans to have management teams close to each of these markets. The loss of passporting rights into EU countries after Brexit prompted the company to pursue a three-licensed hub model.
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Revolut’s new Irish chief executive, Joe Heneghan, stated that the company would hire up to 50 people in 2020 as it beefs up operations there. Some of the high-profile positions available in Dublin include a head of regulatory reporting, a regulatory compliance manager, and a new chief operations officer for Europe.
For now, the company is applying for an EMI license. The license is similar to the one used to operate out of the UK. Heneghan said that when the company gets that license, it can then operate into other European countries.
