British fintech Revolut is now launching in India. The company states that cross-border payments remain one of the country’s most underserved financial services. By its estimate, Indians spend about $30 billion overseas every year and lose around $600 million in bank charges. Revolut’s India head has called these fees criminal.
Paroma Chatterjee, Revolut India CEO, explained that foreign exchange has traditionally been the preserve of banks. She noted that when people get foreign currency from their bank or use a bank-issued travel card, they have been levied humongous charges.
Since 2021, Revolut has been working toward its India launch to fill gaps it sees in the country’s foreign exchange and traditional payments spaces. The London-headquartered fintech acquired Arvog Forex in 2022 to obtain a license for offering remittance and multi-currency account services in India. In April of this year, it also secured a prepaid payment instrument license from the Reserve Bank of India. This license allows Revolut to issue prepaid cards, support digital wallets, and integrate with the government-backed Unified Payments Interface.
With these regulatory approvals, Revolut aims to challenge traditional banks and compete with existing fintech players in India. The startup is targeting more than 150 million globally aspiring, digitally native Indians aged between 25 and 45. It plans to onboard about 20 million users by 2030 and process at least $7 billion worth of their transactions.
Chatterjee said that having its own regulatory approvals, including the PPI license, allows the fintech to offer a more differentiated experience than players that rely on bank partnerships. She stated this enables them to deliver the kind of customer experience they want to deliver.
Revolut will offer Indian consumers a prepaid wallet with UPI support and its own branded UPI handles. It will also provide a domestic Visa card and an international multi-currency Visa card. The company will introduce dedicated kids and teens accounts linked to parents’ profiles, a subscription-based model, and budgeting and analytics tools that provide insights into spending habits.
Notably, the startup has regulatory permissions to enable both domestic and international payments and transfers through its platform. It also has authorization to enable same-day remittances from India through a local bank partner.
Unlike many Indian fintech players that use minimum know-your-customer checks for limited transactions, Revolut will offer only full-KYC wallets. The fintech will also verify new users against global sanctions lists, including those maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control and the United Nations. Chatterjee said this approach is aimed at attracting high-intent customers willing to complete a more detailed onboarding process, which includes Aadhaar and video verification.
She noted that a person would only complete this process if they are genuinely interested in using the product. Therefore, a fully onboarded KYC customer will be her primary metric. She added that in a country like India, sheer curiosity drives downloads from the App Store, but that is not Revolut’s metric of success.
The fintech aims to measure its success in India by the depth of user engagement and profitability, not merely by increasing its user base. Chatterjee pointed out that while some companies talk about having hundreds of millions of customers, Revolut has 65 million customers across 39 countries and is valued at $75 billion. The reason for this high valuation is that from these 65 million customers, Revolut processes more than $4 billion in transactions and delivers more than a billion dollars in profit. She highlighted that in any given month, more than 25 million of those customers are active.
She was referring to the new valuation Revolut announced last month following a secondary share sale, which boosted it from $45 billion last summer.
Chatterjee also said that Revolut already has a waitlist of more than 350,000 people in India. The company plans to onboard these users later this year before opening the app to new users. The exact launch timeline will depend on how quickly the company clears the waitlist and customers complete their KYC and anti-money laundering checks.
The startup is also exploring partners other than Visa, including the Indian government’s RuPay, as it ramps up the product to provide customers with a choice of networks.
Revolut has already infused $45 million in India to kickstart its operations and to localize its entire tech stack to conform to the country’s data sovereignty regulations. Chatterjee said the company plans to invest more as it begins its operations.
Out of Revolut’s 10,000 employees worldwide, about 3,500 are already based in India. This is its largest workforce globally, even bigger than in its home market of the U.K. Some of these employees also work on products and features for markets outside India.
Despite Revolut’s significant plans, it will still face competition upon its arrival. While foreign exchange is dominated by banks in India, fintech players such as Niyo, Scapia, Fi, and BookMyForex are already active in the country’s cross-border and remittance market.