Future of Fintech: Revolut lands its UK banking licence
Future of Fintech – Edition #185 (1st–15th’ 26)
Fintech is moving into a more regulated phase. Growth is being driven through new licences, fresh capital, and expansion into new markets, while cross-border payments and treasury tools are becoming more central to business finance. Data, AI, and infrastructure are also becoming more central to delivery at scale.
✔️ Regulatory progress and growth capital
✔️ Cross-border expansion and treasury tools
✔️ Data, AI and infrastructure at scale
Ready to connect the dots? 👀
🚨 Featured Story of the Week:
Anchoring product depth and expansion with licences
Revolut has been in the news across multiple fronts, and the clearest thread running through these developments is expansion with greater depth. In the past few weeks, Revolut has:
Secured its full UK banking licence, allowing it to begin offering deposit accounts and lending products
Joined the FCA’s stablecoin sandbox as part of the UK’s supervised testing framework for digital money
Opened a digital payments waitlist in India ahead of its planned market entry
Introduced a travel-focused corporate card for business customers in the UK and surpassed 1 million customers in Belgium
The significance is that Revolut is building the pieces needed to compete more directly with incumbent banks and payment providers across multiple markets at once.
Want the deeper context? WhiteSight’s Revolut Deep Dive Report 2025 explores how the fintech is expanding country by country, while building greater product depth and regulatory leverage in the UK.
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🚀 Startup Spotlight: Wavvest
This edition, we’re spotlighting Wavvest, a startup founded in 2024 that is building an all-in-one, AI-driven operating system for financial advisors.
Financial advisory workflows are often fragmented across separate tools for planning, investments, estate management, insurance, and tax. Wavvest is focused on bringing these functions into one system to reduce manual work and make financial planning more integrated and consistent.
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Edition 185 focuses on the developments setting the pace for digital finance.
The Week’s Hot 10!♨️🔟
Growth Gets Institutional
⤷ Revolut received its full UK banking licence, allowing it to begin offering deposit accounts and formally start lending to retail and business customers.
⤷ Ualá raised $195M in an Allianz X-led funding round at a $3.2B post-money valuation to scale its financial ecosystem across Latin America.Cash Flow Finds Yield
⤷ Airwallex launched Yield in the US to let businesses move idle cash balances into money market funds and earn higher returns within its financial platform.
⤷ Liberis partnered with eBay to launch Flexible Growth Financing for UK business sellers, enabling access to working capital through eBay Seller Capital.Cross-Border Gets Simpler
⤷ Mastercard launched Mastercard Global Commerce Suite for SMBs in APAC to support cross-border through capabilities powered by Mastercard Move.
⤷Thunes partnered with Absa to launch Absa Global Pay, a digital remittance service that lets customers send money internationally.Capital Becomes Innovative and Accessible
⤷ Airwallex launched Yield in the US to let businesses move idle cash balances into money market funds and earn higher returns within its financial platform.
⤷ Liberis partnered with eBay to launch Flexible Growth Financing for UK business sellers, enabling access to working capital through eBay Seller Capital.Expansion Needs Local Infrastructure
⤷ TrueLayer acquired Zimpler to expand its Pay by Bank network across the Nordics.
⤷ Mambu was selected by Nyla to power its digital banking infrastructure as Nyla launches in Ghana and prepares to expand across West Africa.
Now, for the ‘byte’-sized fintech buzz –
Digital banking is being shaped by market entry and regulatory approval, as fintech use licences, launches, and acquisitions to expand their footprint.
Revolut opened a waitlist to roll out digital payment services in India, including an INR prepaid wallet with UPI integration and Visa cards for domestic and international use.
Advent International completed its acquisition of tbi bank after receiving approval from the European Central Bank.
Digital payments is moving toward more automated and multi-rail execution, combining virtual card flows with core bank payment infrastructure.
Mastercard partnered with Travelsoft Pay to integrate the Mastercard Wholesale Program for virtual card number-based B2B paymentsl by automating pay-ins and pay-outs.
Worldline extended its payments partnership with ABN AMRO to provide card issuing, SEPA credit transfers, instant payments and related support services.
Digital wealth is becoming more operational and institutional, with AI being applied to advisor workflows while market infrastructure attracts new capital.
Guardian partnered with Avantos to add AI tools to its wealth management business, focused on advisor onboarding, workflow management and client servicing
Apex Fintech Solutions partnered with Wavvest to deliver AI-powered financial planning using real-time custodial data, letting advisors generate plans, tax analysis and portfolio transition recommendations with less manual data entry.
Embedded finance is moving deeper into business workflows, bringing funding and financial admin tools directly into the software used by end users.
Construct CRM partnered with U.S. Bank Avvance to add embedded financing to its white-label software, giving more than roofing contractors access to home-improvement installment loans.
SumUp partnered with Sage to embed accounting and Making Tax Digital filing tools into its platform for UK sole traders.
Open finance is becoming more practical, as connected financial data starts feeding directly into business software and payment journeys.
Loop partnered with Wave to launch a direct API integration that automatically syncs Loop business banking data into Wave’s accounting software for Canadian SMBs.
Wero went live for e-commerce payments in Belgium, extending its A2A payment app from P2P into merchant payments.
Fintech infrastructure is being built for scale, with providers extending long-term payment processing capabilities while expanding cloud capacity into new regions.
Worldline extended its payments partnership with ABN AMRO to provide card issuing, SEPA credit transfers, instant payments and related support services.
Tencent Cloud partnered with iyzico to support iyzico’s European expansion and launch its cloud-based production platform in Europe.
And that’s a wrap 👋
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the Weekly Fintech Brew!
If you’re someone who likes to read think pieces, you will likely love our monthly blog, Fintersections, where our team members analyse the convergence of fintech with the world.
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