Revolut is making a banking push into Australia, aiming to become more than a travel card. And it’s betting that gaps in the local banking system will be something it can fill, especially for SMEs.
The UK-founded fintech, best known for its multi-currency accounts and low-cost foreign exchange, now counts around one million Australian users. It’s also repositioning itself as a full-service financial platform.
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Globally, that transition is already underway. Revolut’s leadership says the company is focused on embedding itself more deeply into customers’ financial lives by expanding beyond payments into lending, investing and other core banking products.
“I think we’ve been used a lot, especially in places like the UK, as more of a travel card,” Antoine Le Nel, chief growth and marketing officer at Revolut, said to SmartCompany.
“We really want to move away from that… how do we build more products and build more credibility into being really the primary bank for our users?”
A shift that large on a global scale requires both a broader product suite, particularly credit, and a longer-term effort to build trust where legacy banks still dominate their respective markets.
The company is also leaning on high-profile partnerships to help build that credibility, including its name sponsorship of Audi’s F1 team and local deals such as its backing of the Hawthorn Football Club in the AFL.
It has also ramped up its advertising presence in Australia, including prominent placements in airports, as it looks to shift perceptions beyond its early positioning as a travel-focused product.
SMEs at the centre of Revolut’s growth
In Australia, Revolut sees SMEs as a core part of its next evolution.
The company is rapidly expanding its business banking offering, which it says is growing faster than its consumer product and has already become a significant revenue driver globally.
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“While the truth is we’re growing even faster on our business product… the B2B aspect is really a big platform that we are betting on a lot this year,” Le Nel said.
Revolut’s business arm has already surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue, supported by clients ranging from startups to large enterprises, including major travel and airline brands.
Revolut says Australia presents a particularly attractive opportunity due to the structure of the economy and the nature of its business base.
“Part of the reason Australia was so attractive from the business point of view is it’s an economy built on small businesses,” Matt Baxby, CEO of Revolut Australia and New Zealand, told SmartCompany.
“Global citizens, constantly travelling and underserved competition hasn’t been there.”
That combination of internationally active SMEs and heavy reliance on cross-border payments plays directly into areas where Revolut has historically focused.
The company is also building out its own payments ecosystem, allowing merchants to accept payments directly from Revolut users, which it says can reduce fees and improve margins by streamlining the transaction chain, though such models rely on scale to be effective.
Revolut is taking aim at traditional banks
‘While Revolut competes with fintech players like Airwallex, it sees traditional banks as its primary rival in Australia’s SME market.
“The competitors are the major banks… they’re the ones we can go after. They’re not getting a good deal with major banks.”
This critique centres on fragmented systems, high fees, and a lack of integration across products, particularly for businesses operating across borders.
“There’s so much friction in the way the major banks tend to serve the products up. They’re not well integrated… and the more you can make that seamless and easy, the adoption will just continue to grow,” Baxby said.
Revolut is attempting to differentiate through a combination of pricing and user experience, alongside a broader platform that connects consumer and business accounts in a single ecosystem.
It operates a single global app across markets, with features enabled locally depending on regulatory approvals, allowing it to scale products internationally while tailoring them to each market.
At the same time, the company argues Australia’s regulatory framework has yet to fully unlock competition.
While the Consumer Data Right (CDR) has enabled data sharing between institutions, Revolut says adoption has been limited by a lack of functionality. In particular, the company points to the absence of action initiation, which would allow users to move money directly between accounts.
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“We’ve said publicly that one of the misses was not having action initiation as part of it,” Baxby said.
“Aussies want value and utility. If you’re not able to offer something, I just don’t think it’s going to be adopted.”
Without that next layer of functionality, open banking has yet to materially shift competition — leaving fintechs to compete on product, pricing and user experience rather than regulatory advantage alone.
From an app to an all-encompassing platform
Revolut’s broader ambition is to consolidate financial services into a single platform — reducing the need for users to manage multiple apps across payments, travel, investing and credit.
“I am convinced that everyone says fintech is making everyone’s life better. I think it made life a lot worse,” Le Nel said.
“Because before you used to have your bank… now you have one app when you go travel, one app for your crypto, one app for your credit card.”
“That’s what we’re trying to solve as well… we want to offer everything in one stop shop.”
Whether that vision translates in Australia will depend on how successfully Revolut can convert a base of travel-focused users into primary banking customers. And whether SMEs see enough value to shift away from incumbents.