Revolut Aims To Take On Indian Banks And Their ‘criminal’ Forex Fees

British fintech Revolut — now launching successful India — says cross-border payments stay 1 of India’s astir underserved financial services. By its estimate, Indians walk astir $30 cardinal overseas each twelvemonth and suffer astir $600 cardinal successful slope charges — fees its India caput calls “criminal.”

“It has been nan sphere of banks,” Paroma Chatterjee, Revolut India CEO, told TechCrunch. “You spell to your slope to return currency, overseas speech retired from your bank, aliases you return a recreation paper that is issued by your slope erstwhile you’re walking overseas … location person been humongous charges which person been levied connected this.”

Since 2021, Revolut has been moving toward its India launch, aiming to capable what it sees arsenic gaps successful nan country’s overseas speech and accepted payments spaces. The London-headquartered fintech acquired Arvog Forex successful 2022 to get a licence and connection remittance and multi-currency relationship services successful India. In April this year, it besides secured a prepaid costs instrumentality (PPI) license from nan Reserve Bank of India, allowing it to rumor prepaid cards, support integer wallets and merge pinch nan government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

With these regulatory approvals, Revolut intends to situation accepted banks successful India and compete pinch existing fintech players. The British startup is targeting much than 150 cardinal “globally aspiring, digitally native” Indians aged betwixt 25 and 45, pinch plans to onboard astir 20 cardinal users by 2030 and process astatine slightest $7 cardinal worthy of their transactions.

Chatterjee said that specified regulatory approvals — including nan PPI licence — allows nan fintech to connection a much differentiated acquisition than players that trust connected slope partnerships. “We tin present nan benignant of customer acquisition that we want to deliver,” she said.

Revolut will connection Indian consumers a prepaid wallet pinch UPI support and its ain branded UPI handles, on pinch a home Visa paper and an world multi-currency Visa card. It will besides present dedicated kids and teens accounts linked to parents’ profiles, a subscription-based model, and budgeting and analytics devices that supply insights into spending habits.

Notably, nan startup has regulatory permissions to alteration some home and world payments and transfers done its platform. It besides has authorization to alteration same-day remittances from India done a section slope partner.

Unlike galore Indian fintech players that usage minimum know-your-customer (KYC) checks to quickly onboard users for limited, low-value transactions, Revolut will connection only full-KYC wallets. The fintech will besides verify caller users against world sanctions lists, including those maintained by nan Office of Foreign Assets Control and nan United Nations. This approach, Chatterjee said, is aimed astatine attracting “high-intent customers” who are consenting to complete a much elaborate onboarding process, including Aadhaar and video verification.

“Somebody would do that only if they’re willing successful utilizing nan product. So, this afloat KYC customer onboarded is going to beryllium my customer metric,” she noted.

“In a state for illustration India, erstwhile you database yourself connected nan App Store, sheer curiosity drives downloads,” she said. “That’s not our metric of success.”

The fintech besides intends to measurement its occurrence successful India by nan extent of personification engagement and profitability and not simply expanding its personification base.

“There are group who talk astir having 300–400 cardinal customers,” Chatterjee told TechCrunch. “Revolut globally successful 39 countries has 65 cardinal customers, and it is weighted astatine $75 billion. The logic is that from these 65 cardinal customers, Revolut is processing much than $4 cardinal worthy of transactions and delivering much than a cardinal dollars worthy of profit. And that is because retired of those 65 cardinal customers successful immoderate fixed month, much than 25 cardinal customers are active.”

She’s referring to nan the caller valuation Revolut announced past month connected nan backmost of a secondary stock sale, that boosted it from $45 cardinal past summer.

Revolut already has a waitlist of much than 350,000 group successful India, she besides said, which it plans to onboard by later this twelvemonth earlier opening nan app to caller users. The nonstop motorboat timeline, however, will dangle connected really quickly nan institution clears nan waitlist and customers complete their KYC and anti–money laundering (AML) checks.

The startup is besides exploring partners different than Visa, including nan Indian government’s RuPay, arsenic it ramps up nan merchandise to supply customers pinch a prime of networks.

Revolut has already infused $45 million successful India to kickstart its operations and to localize its full tech stack to conform to nan country’s information sovereignty regulations. It plans to put much arsenic it originates its operations, Chatterjee said.

Of Revolut’s 10,000 labor worldwide, astir 3,500 are already based successful India — its largest workforce globally, moreover bigger than successful its location marketplace of nan U.K. Some of these labor besides activity connected nan products and features disposable successful markets extracurricular India.

But arsenic important arsenic Revolut’s plans are, it will still look title erstwhile it arrives. While overseas speech is dominated by banks successful India, fintech players specified arsenic Niyo, Scapia, Fi, and BookMyForex are already progressive successful India’s cross-border and remittance market.