Revolut takes its turn in the BNPL market

The British neo-bank Revolut has long offered payment services as part of its alternative financial player offering. But it has so far stayed away from an increasingly widespread trend: that of the BNPL. It is now making up for this by announcing the launch of its own service in Ireland.

FACTS

• Revolut has chosen Ireland as the location to launch its first split payment product.

• The new service will allow users to spread their payments over three instalments, up to an overall credit limit of €499. A fee of 1.65% will be applied to the total amount of the purchase financed via the service.

• Revolut also specifies that beyond this limit, it undertakes to check the solvency of its future "borrowers" by analysing their banking data via an Open Banking system that connects to all their accounts.

• Revolut plans to extend its BNPL offer geographically across Europe. Poland and Romania are expected to be included in this rollout later this year.

CHALLENGES

• Completing its super-app model: This BNPL offer will consolidate the portfolio of varied services that the neo-bank has been trying to build for several months. In addition to this payment/credit solution, Revolut now also offers more traditional payment services, insurance, savings accounts and trading. Its positioning on the BNPL market was also announced by Revolut, which is also targeting the decentralised finance market.

• Serving its first market: Revolut did not choose Ireland by chance. The country represents its first market, where the neo-bank has nearly 1.9 million customers.

• Taking advantage of a buoyant market: Leading market observers estimate that BNPL could be worth more than £680 billion ($831 billion) in Europe within the next five years.

MARKET PERSPECTIVE

• In announcing its positioning in the BNPL market, Revolut chose to cite Klarna, and other FinTechs, as the models to follow in this direction. The neo-bank is therefore referring to the ultimate model for this market, which is under attack in the United Kingdom given the potential risks in terms of debt that it poses to the most fragile households.

• The BNPL is also outside the legislation that currently governs the more traditional credit market and will very soon be the subject of new specific regulation, both in the UK and in Europe.

• Revolut relies on an amount limit and a credit check before the transaction is validated, in order to offer a responsible service.

KEY FIGURES
2015: Creation
more than 18 million individual customers
500,000 corporate customers
90 countries covered by the end of the year