The European Central Bank quietly moved to rein in Revolut last year, restricting Europe's most valuable fintech from launching new products across the European Economic Area over concerns about how fast it approved them, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. The intervention had not been disclosed before.
The ECB paused Revolut's European arm from releasing new EEA products last summer until it fixed “deficiencies” in its approval process, people familiar with the matter told the FT. Revolut's European business, regulated through the ECB and the Bank of Lithuania, was informed in July 2025.
The regulator went beyond a pause. It ordered an independent review of Revolut's risk, compliance, and legal functions, told the company to strengthen the staffing, skills, and independence of its product-approval teams, and required future launches to get sign-off from in-house experts plus a board assessment of their impact on group capital and liquidity.
Outside the EEA, the limits were tighter still: no acquisitions and no new customers.
A check on the ‘self-guided missiles'
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The restriction strikes at Revolut's core method. Chief executive Nik Storonsky has urged staff to behave like “self-guided missiles”, free to ship products with limited oversight. “They press the button and they reach the goals themselves,” he said on a podcast in December 2024. That speed built a fast-growing range of services, and a valuation ahead of most European banks, in little over a decade.
How much still bites is unclear. Revolut has launched mortgages, teen accounts, and branches across Europe since, suggesting the limits eased. “We are in continuous and constructive dialogue with our regulators, including the European Central Bank,” a Revolut spokesperson said, adding that it “regularly strengthens” its controls.
The ECB declined to comment. The supervisor had already signalled concern: it raised the Pillar 2 capital requirement on Revolut's Lithuanian entity to 4.5 per cent for 2026, the highest among the banks it directly supervises.
The timing is awkward. Revolut is running a share sale that values it at $115bn, up from $75bn last year, which would make it Europe's seventh-largest bank by market value, ahead of Barclays and BNP Paribas. It has told investors it aims to list eventually at $200bn, a level at which Storonsky, who holds nearly 30 per cent, could gain another 10 per cent.
The company grew to 75 million customers last year and lifted pre-tax profit 57 per cent to £1.7bn on £4.5bn of revenue.
It is not the only friction. Italy fined Revolut €11.5m in April over misleading investment-product information, which it is appealing, and the firm has just won a US bank charter application and a full UK licence after years of friction with regulators. The episode also feeds a longer-running worry: that Europe's caution holds back the champions it wants to build.
The open question is whether a company run like a tech startup can keep that pace once it is supervised like a systemic bank chasing a $200bn listing.