Revolut chooses Visa as lead issuing partner for its international expansion

via Tearsheet 

Visa and Revolut are growing their relationship via an expanding partnership in Europe, adding 24 new markets globally.

Partnering on new market launches: Leveraging Visa’s brand, scale and global footprint, Revolut plans to bring its challenger bank offering to five new regions, reaching 24 new markets, for a total of 56 markets globally.

• Revolut offers consumers a range of digital financial services via a mobile application, including currency exchange, budgeting and person-to-person payments, all linked to a Visa card.
• Under the terms of the agreement, Revolut will primarily issue Visa-branded cards in the global expansion.

Revolut has expressed its interest in expanding globally, primarily by acquiring new banking licenses.

• Visa will enable Revolut to launch initially in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore and the United States.
• The challenger later plans on entering Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine and Vietnam.
• Revolut first began issuing Visa cards to its customers across Europe in July 2017. Since that time, Revolut has worked with the payments company to issue Visa-branded cards in every major European market.
• Together with Visa, Revolut customers get instant spending notifications, monthly spending breakouts and budgets by individual categories. Visa APIs, including Visa Token Service and Payments Attribute Account Inquiry, and Visa prepaid and debit cards, complement the existing Revolut app with security and speed consumers expect when they use their Visa.

“We are excited to build upon our existing collaboration with Visa, the world’s leader in digital payments, which will bring to life our shared vision for seamless, innovative payment experiences,” said Nikolay Storonsky, founder and chief executive officer, Revolut. “The new global agreement with Visa is timely for Revolut as we move into a number of new markets to offer even more consumers the control, flexibility and innovative features that our European customers have been benefiting from for years.”

Servicing the fintech community: Visa continues to pursue ways to encourage the growth of emerging payments ecosystems around the world.

• The company rolled out Partner last week, a resource portal with information for technology firms to accelerate getting up and running with Visa.
• The company also recently launched its Fast Track program in the US, a collaborative program that provides internal resources and external partners to fintechs to integrate with Visa.
• Visa Direct, the firm’s platform that enables faster push payments, is connected to over a billion financial accounts worldwide .

“Revolut has made great strides in delivering innovative and unique experiences to consumers in Europe. We are thrilled to extend our relationship as Revolut looks to achieve their global growth ambitions and collectively drive increased volume on the Visa network,” said Jack Forestell, chief product officer, Visa.

“With Visa being accepted at nearly 54 million merchant locations across more than 200 countries, we have the scale, experience and expertise to help fintechs like Revolut go global.”