Revolut has spent a decade becoming the app that millions of Britons use to pay abroad, split bills and trade. In late October 2026 it began offering the product that defines a high-street bank: an unsecured personal loan. The launch is small, but it tests the company’s central claim, that it can turn usage into deposits and deposits into lending. The facts below were checked on 31 October 2026.
From mobilisation to lending
The UK bank is a separate company, now called Revolut Bank UK Ltd (it was Revolut NewCo UK Ltd until March 2026). It appears on the Prudential Regulation Authority’s list of banks as at 1 October 2026.
According to Revolut’s 2025 annual report, the bank received permission “with restrictions” on 25 July 2024, and the PRA lifted those restrictions in March 2026. The PRA’s own guidance says mobilisation, the restricted start-up phase in which deposits are capped at £50,000, “should take no longer than 12 months”. By our count Revolut’s took about 19 months. The PRA has not published reasons, and a longer period does not by itself indicate a problem, but it shows how much work the step from payments firm to bank involves at this scale.
The practical change for customers is deposit protection. Since 1 December 2025 the Financial Services Compensation Scheme has covered up to £120,000 per person, per authorised firm. For Revolut, protected deposits are the cheap, stable funding that makes lending possible.
What is on offer
As reported by Reuters via RTÉ on 27 October, the loans range from £2,000 to £25,000 at annual rates from 6.9% to 29.3%, repayable over one to five years. The rollout starts with selected customers and is meant to widen over the coming months, with credit cards next and mortgages later. Francesca Carlesi, the UK chief executive, said the aim is to “become effectively the primary bank of choice for everybody in the UK”.
The headline rate needs context. The Bank of England’s Money and Credit release for September 2026 put the effective rate on new UK personal loans at 9.85%. Revolut’s lowest rate is well below that average, but the spread of its range, up to 29.3%, shows that pricing will depend heavily on each borrower’s risk. We could not confirm Revolut’s representative APR because its UK product pages were not accessible to our checks, so we do not quote one.
The market is growing. The same Bank of England release shows consumer credit up 9.8% on a year earlier, with Bank Rate at 3.75% after the Monetary Policy Committee held it by six votes to three in September, three members preferring a rise.
What the accounts say about the strategy
Revolut’s 2025 numbers explain why lending matters. The annual report shows revenue of £4,515.8m and profit before tax of £1,713.3m. About 76% of revenue came from fees and commissions and 21.6% from interest. Cards, subscriptions, wealth and foreign exchange each contributed more than lending.
The loan book is growing fast from a low base. Loans and advances to customers were £2,150.1m at the end of 2025, up 120%, against total customer balances of £50.2bn including those held with partners. On those figures, lending is equivalent to roughly 4% of balances (our calculation, and not a regulatory loan-to-deposit ratio, because not all balances sit on Revolut’s own balance sheet). Credit losses on lending products rose to £61.2m from £29.6m, and the report puts expected credit loss coverage at 4.1%.
Two readings follow. The bull case is obvious: a bank with tens of billions in customer balances and a small loan book has room to grow interest income for years. The cautious case is that Revolut’s lending history comes almost entirely from benign credit conditions. Its loss rates have not yet been tested through a UK downturn, and unsecured consumer credit is where losses arrive first.
Scale and ambition
The UK launch sits inside a wider push. A Revolut spokesperson confirmed to Reuters in July 2026 a secondary share sale at a $115bn valuation. In the United States, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted preliminary conditional approval for a national bank in a letter dated 2 September 2026, conditional on at least $95m of paid-in capital and lapsing if capital is not raised within 12 months or the bank does not open within 18 months.
Customer figures vary by source and date. The annual report refers to 13 million UK customers, while the October Reuters report cites 14 million. We use the range rather than pick one.
What it means for founders and investors
- Distribution is not the same as credit skill. Revolut can put a loan offer in front of millions of users at almost no cost. Underwriting those users well through a cycle is a separate capability, and the next two years of loss data will show whether it has one.
- Fees fund the experiment. With most revenue from fees, Revolut can price loans aggressively to win primary-account relationships. Competing fintechs without that cushion should not assume they can match its rates.
- Licences are slow. Nineteen months of mobilisation is a useful planning benchmark for any founder who thinks a banking licence is a quick route to cheaper funding.
What to watch
- 5 November 2026: next Bank Rate decision (MPC dates), which feeds directly into loan pricing.
- 30 November 2026: the Bank of England’s October Money and Credit figures, the next read on consumer borrowing.
- 17 December 2026: the final MPC decision of the year.
- By about 2 September 2027: the deadline in the OCC’s conditional approval for Revolut’s US bank to raise its capital.
Sources
- Revolut Group Holdings: Annual Report 2025
- Companies House: Revolut Bank UK Ltd (12871051)
- PRA: list of banks as at 1 October 2026 (CSV)
- PRA: new bank authorisation process
- Bank of England: Money and Credit, September 2026
- Bank of England: Monetary Policy Summary, September 2026
- Bank of England: upcoming MPC dates
- FSCS: deposit protection limit
- OCC: Conditional approval #1390, Revolut Bank US, N.A.
- Reuters via RTÉ: Revolut launches personal loans in UK (27 October 2026)
- Reuters via AOL: Revolut confirms $115bn valuation share sale (July 2026)
