Digital Bank Revolut Launches Personal Loans in the UK on October 26: Challenging the Traditional Big Banks
On October 26, digital bank Revolut announced that it has begun offering unsecured personal loans in the UK, with the news confirmed to Reuters by its UK chief executive, Francesca Carlesi. It is another push by Europe's most valuable startup into the consumer credit market dominated by Britain's big banks. The move means Revolut is expanding from its core payments and subscription products into higher-risk lending, with competitors including NatWest, Lloyds Bank, Barclays, Santander UK and HSBC. Carlesi said the company's goal is to transform from a very successful everyday spending app into “everyone's first-choice bank”. Revolut also plans to launch credit card products in the near future as part of efforts to raise revenue per customer — a metric on which it currently lags the traditional banks. Revolut was founded in 2015 by chief executive Nik Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, is headquartered in London, and now has more than 80 million customers worldwide. Even so, Revolut still faces questions about whether it can sustain its rapid growth; its revenue per customer is far below that of traditional banks, and the share of customers using it as their main salary account also needs to rise. For UK consumers, more lending choices mean fiercer price competition, but they also remind borrowers to live within their means and compare interest rates and terms carefully.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 伦敦大本钟（资料图），取自 Wikimedia Commons。Photo: Big Ben, London (file photo), via Wikimedia Commons.
