British fintech Revolut — now launching in India — says cross-border payments remain one of India’s most underserved financial services. By its estimate, Indians spend about $30 billion overseas every year and lose around $600 million in bank charges — fees its India head calls “criminal.”
“It has been the preserve of banks,” Paroma Chatterjee, Revolut India CEO, told TechCrunch. “You go to your bank to take currency, foreign exchange out from your bank, or you take a travel card that is issued by your bank when you’re traveling overseas … there have been humongous charges which have been levied on this.”
Since 2021, Revolut has been working toward its India launch, aiming to fill what it sees as gaps in the country’s foreign exchange and traditional payments spaces. The London-headquartered fintech acquired Arvog Forex in 2022 to obtain a license and offer remittance and multi-currency account services in India. In April this year, it also secured a prepaid payment instrument (PPI) license from the Reserve Bank of India, allowing it to issue prepaid cards, support digital wallets, and integrate with the government-backed Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
With these regulatory approvals, Revolut aims to challenge traditional banks in India and compete with existing fintech players. The British startup is targeting more than 150 million “globally aspiring, digitally native” Indians aged between 25 and 45, with plans to onboard about 20 million users by 2030 and process at least $7 billion worth of their transactions.
Chatterjee said that such regulatory approvals — including the PPI license — allows the fintech to offer a more differentiated experience than players that rely on bank partnerships. “We can deliver the kind of customer experience that we want to deliver,” she said.
Revolut will offer Indian consumers a prepaid wallet with UPI support and its own branded UPI handles, along with a domestic Visa card and an international multi-currency Visa card. It will also 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 (KYC) checks to quickly onboard users for limited, low-value 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. This approach, Chatterjee said, is aimed at attracting “high-intent customers” who are willing to complete a more detailed onboarding process, including Aadhaar and video verification.
“Somebody would do that only if they’re interested in using the product. So, this full KYC customer onboarded is going to be my customer metric,” she noted.
“In a country like India, once you list yourself on the App Store, sheer curiosity drives downloads,” she said. “That’s not our metric of success.”
The fintech also aims to measure its success in India by the depth of user engagement and profitability and not merely increasing its user base.
“There are people who talk about having 300-400 million customers,” Chatterjee told TechCrunch. “Revolut globally in 39 countries has 65 million customers, and it is valued at $75 billion. The reason is that from these 65 million customers, Revolut is processing more than $4 billion worth of transactions and delivering more than a billion dollars’ worth of profit. And that is because out of those 65 million customers in any given month, more than 25 million customers are active.”
She’s referring to the new valuation Revolut announced last month on the back of a secondary share sale that boosted it from $45 billion last summer.
Revolut already has a waitlist of more than 350,000 people in India, she also said, which it plans to onboard by later this year before opening the app to new users. The exact launch timeline, however, will depend on how quickly the company clears the waitlist and customers complete their KYC and anti-money laundering (AML) 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 millio in India to kickstart its operations and to localize its entire tech stack to conform to the country’s data sovereignty regulations. It plans to invest more as it begins its operations, Chatterjee said.
Of Revolut’s 10,000 employees worldwide, about 3,500 are already based in India — its largest workforce globally, even bigger than in its home market of the U.K. Some of these employees also work on the products and features available in markets outside India.
But as significant as Revolut’s plans are, it will still face competition once it arrives. While foreign exchange is dominated by banks in India, fintech players such as Niyo, Scapia, Fi, and BookMyForex are already active in India’s cross-border and remittance market.