Revolut is testing how far private fintech valuations can run before public markets get a vote. A potential $115 billion secondary sale would make liquidity, not an IPO, the story to watch.
Revolut is no longer behaving like a company waiting politely for the public markets to open. The London fintech is weighing a secondary share sale that could value it at about $115 billion, according to Bloomberg Technology, giving employees and existing investors another way to cash out while the company keeps its IPO timetable firmly in its own hands.
That matters because this is not just another late-stage funding headline. A secondary sale does not necessarily put fresh money into the company. It lets people who already own shares sell some of them to new or existing investors. For a business like Revolut, that structure solves a practical problem: employees want liquidity, early backers want options, and management does not want the scrutiny, volatility, or timing pressure of a public listing before it is ready.
The price being discussed is the striking part. Revolut was valued at $33 billion in 2021, then $45 billion in a 2024 secondary sale, then $75 billion in a 2025 transaction that brought in investors including Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer and Fidelity. Moving toward $115 billion would put the company in a different class altogether, closer to the scale of established global banks than most venture-backed fintechs.
For years, the standard startup path was simple enough. Raise private capital, grow fast, then go public when the market would pay up. That model has become less tidy. Higher rates, tougher public market investors and memories of overvalued tech listings have made founders more careful about when they ring the bell.
Revolut is using the private market more aggressively. Earlier reports from Axios, citing the Financial Times, said the company was preparing a secondary sale that could value it above $100 billion and that CEO Nik Storonsky was eyeing a public listing in 2028 or later. That is the real signal. Revolut is building a rhythm of private liquidity events that can keep staff and investors engaged without surrendering control to quarterly earnings calls.
Stripe has used a similar playbook. So have other large private technology companies that became too valuable, too widely held and too operationally mature to behave like ordinary startups, but still did not want to list at the wrong moment. The difference is that Revolut is doing this in banking, where trust, regulation and profitability carry more weight than growth alone.
That is why the valuation is not floating entirely on ambition. Revolut’s 2025 annual report said revenue rose 46% to £4.5 billion, profit before tax reached £1.7 billion, and net profit rose to £1.3 billion. The company also said its retail customer base reached 68.3 million, customer balances rose to £50.2 billion, and transaction volumes climbed to £1.3 trillion. These are not small marketplace numbers. They are banking numbers, even if Revolut still sells itself with the speed and product range of a technology company.
The banking licence question has changed
There is one reason investors will keep looking past the headline valuation: how Revolut turns regulatory progress into durable banking economics. The company’s long-term prize is not simply payments, cards or app-based foreign exchange. It wants to become a primary bank for customers across markets, and that requires licences, local compliance and confidence from regulators.
The company has made clear progress. Its 2025 report said it operated as a licensed bank in 30 countries, secured new banking authorisation in Colombia, received a banking licence in Mexico, and gained a Markets in Crypto-Assets licence for regulated crypto services across Europe. It also said the number of customers using Revolut as their primary bank grew 45% year on year.
The UK is now a bigger opportunity, not an unresolved licence problem. In March 2026, Revolut received approval from the Prudential Regulation Authority to exit mobilisation and launch as a full UK bank, ending a process that began with its 2021 application and moved through restricted authorisation in 2024. That gives the company a clearer path to current accounts, protected deposits and broader lending in its home market. The test now is execution.
There is also a product reason the licence progress matters. Revolut’s growth is increasingly spread across business banking, wealth, lending, savings, crypto, stock trading and payments. Its business banking arm grew revenue by 53% in 2025, according to the company, and Bloomberg has reported that Storonsky recently pushed staff to help bring in more business customers. The more Revolut moves into lending and wealth, the more its valuation depends on boring things done well: risk controls, fraud prevention, capital discipline and customer service.
Traditional banks should not dismiss this as private market excess. They have the deposits, the licences and the balance sheets, but Revolut has the product tempo. At the same time, banks from JPMorgan to Barclays are accelerating digital and AI-driven services of their own, which means the competitive gap is not only about who has the slickest app. It is about who can combine distribution, trust and speed without breaking the machinery underneath.
The next sale, if it happens near $115 billion, will tell us how much investors are willing to pay for that combination before public shareholders get involved. A high valuation would strengthen Revolut’s hand, reward early believers and give the company more time. But it would also raise the bar. Once private fintech starts getting priced like a global bank, it has to prove it can behave like one when the easy comparisons run out.
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