Revolut Bank Australia has secured a full, unrestricted ADI licence from APRA, making it the first global fintech to achieve this in the country.
Revolut plans to invest almost AU$400 million ($280 million) over 5 years to move 1.2 million Australian customers to a regulated bank and compete with the Big Four banks.
New customers will get a 3% savings rate, which is higher than Commonwealth Bank’s 2.15% transaction rate. Revolut is adding more competition to established banks, which are already facing challenges from Macquarie.
Six years after launching in Australia with a multi-currency debit card, Revolut received a full Authorised Deposit-taking Institution licence from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority. This is the first time a global fintech has received an unrestricted ADI in Australia and marks Revolut’s first banking entity in the Asia-Pacific region.
Revolut was founded in 2015 by Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko. Today, it serves more than 75 million customers worldwide and is a licensed bank in the United Kingdom, the EEA, and Mexico. The company reportedly considered a secondary share sale at a $115 billion valuation in June, after getting its UK banking licence in March and filing for a US national bank charter.
