Revolut launches unsecured personal loans in Britain to challenge major banks

Digital bank ​Revolut has begun offering unsecured personal loans in Britain, its UK chief executive Francesca Carlesi told ‌Reuters, taking Europe’s most valuable startup into a lucrative consumer lending market dominated by the country’s biggest banks. The move pushes Revolut beyond its core payments and subscription products and into a riskier business as it seeks to compete more directly with lenders including NatWest (NWG.L), Lloyds (LLOY.L), Barclays (BARC.L), ​Santander’s (SAN.MC) UK business and HSBC (HSBA.L). “We want to transition from being a very successful everyday spending app and ​disrupting the market, to become effectively the primary bank of choice for everybody in the UK,” ⁠Carlesi said. Revolut will also launch a credit card product in the near future, Carlesi said, part of a broader ​effort to increase the income it generates from each customer, a metric by which it lags traditional banks. Since its creation ​in 2015 by CEO Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, London-based Revolut has grown worldwide to serve more than 80 million customers and commands a private valuation of $115 billion, bigger than listed rivals like Barclays and NatWest. Yet the bank still faces questions over whether it can sustain ​its breakneck growth with per-customer revenue well below rivals along with the proportion of its customers using Revolut for their ​primary bank account and paying salaries in. Revolut’s rapid growth has also drawn regulatory and operational scrutiny. In 2025, Lithuania’s central bank imposed ‌a ⁠record €3.5 million fine over shortcomings in transaction-monitoring controls, while this month it was among financial firms hit by an hours-long Google Cloud outage. OFFLOADING THE RISK While Revolut already offers unsecured loans in some other countries, Britain is one of its biggest markets. Carlesi said Revolut will initially take a cautious approach, offering loans to a selected group of customers and expanding to its ​14 million customers in Britain ​over the coming months. The loans ⁠will range from £2,000 to £25,000, with rates of 6.9 per cent to 29.3 per cent, a Revolut spokesperson said. Without the decades of customer spending and repayment data held by traditional banks, Revolut has supplemented its ​underwriting with information purchased from external providers, Carlesi said, adding that the company was ​confident about its ⁠credit analysis. Revolut will expand lending gradually and does not have a target for its overall lending in Britain, Carlesi said. The bank will eventually look to offload much of its risk via securitisation, aiming to keep its loan-to-deposit ratio close to 6 per cent, ⁠far lower ​than other banks, she said. Carlesi said Revolut also eventually plans to enter ​the highly competitive market for mortgages in Britain. Revolut’s lending push comes amid persistent cost-of-living challenges in Britain worsened by a soft labour market and rising inflation, ​which could weigh on borrowers’ ability to repay debt.