How Revolut plans to boost business banking in the US

• Key insights: Revolut is aggressively expanding in the U.S., with plans to invest $500 million in the U.S. over the next few years. Last week, the company filed for a U.S. banking charter. 
• What's at stake: The neobank faces stiff competition in the U.S. from fintechs, other neobanks and legacy banks. 
• Forward look: Revolut plans to launch its first Treasury savings product in the U.S. later this year to help businesses "put their money to work," James Gibson, head of Revolut Business, told American Banker. 

As Revolut sets its sights on the U.S. market, it's looking beyond banks' retail customers as targets. 

The neobank, which has applied for a U.S. banking charter, wants to build upon the increased interest in its business banking products to capture more market share. 

"What we're trying to do on both the retail side and on the business side is create a kind of all-in-one banking solution where you can do everything you need with your money," James Gibson, head of Revolut Business, told American Banker. 

Revolut in the US

Revolut has had a presence in the U.S., releasing a retail banking product in 2020, followed by its business product in 2021. Since then, the U.S. has become one of Revolut Business' key markets. 

Revolut Business focuses on transactional banking. Business customers can receive money, make payments and hold money in multiple currencies. 

"It gives them the ability to move money between currencies at the inter-bank rate, which is our big kicker feature that people love," Gibson said, noting there's also spend management and bill pay tools, and card issuing services. 

Outside of the U.S., Revolut Business also has a currency hedging product, called FX Forward, and a payment acceptance business that allows businesses to process brick-and-mortar and e-commerce transactions. 

Revolut is hoping that it can capitalize on the increasingly global nature of business to grow its own, and plans to launch its first Treasury savings product in the U.S. later this year to help businesses "put their money to work," Gibson said. Revolut said it plans to invest $500 million into the U.S. over the next few years. 

"We see a huge amount of our customers in Europe where they have U.S. branches or they have a U.S. parent company," he said. "That's where a lot of our growth has come from on the business side, as well as just pure U.S. businesses who are looking for an FX solution, because there's not that many."

An uphill battle

But Revolut faces stiff competition in the U.S. on all fronts of its business banking division. It competes with fintechs such as Brex — which Capital One is acquiring for $5.15 billion — Aiwallex and Ramp for spend management services; Wise on digital wallet and foreign FX; and Mercury for digital business banking services, just to name a few. It also faces competition from legacy banks in the U.S., which have recently made B2B payments a priority. 

"The Revolut Business program sits in what to me feels like a fairly specific niche in the U.S. market, that being small businesses that need to manage foreign exchange and currency challenges," Aaron Press, a research director at IDC, told American Banker. "That is a common challenge in their home market, but less common in the U.S., at least in terms of market share.

"The U.S. market is large enough to be interesting, but building awareness will be challenging," he said.

Geopolitical unrest may also impede Revolut's ability to expand its business banking arm if small to medium-size businesses are less able to weather short-term uncertainty and approach global expansion with caution, Press said. 

Gibson said that economic uncertainty, especially surrounding tariffs, has surged demand for the company's products. 

"People suddenly realize that, [compared to] a stable currency environment where things are moving by 5% each year, if stuff's moving by 5% over a week or so, that's much more nerve-wracking if you're a low margin business," he said.