Nik Storonsky’s plan for Revolut: a global bank with ‘effectively zero risk’ “We don’t plan to have exposure of more than 10-20 per cent,” he says. Even those loans that Revolut does bring on to its balance sheet will be sold again in whole, or through securitisations. The model, he says, is “to have effectively zero risk for the business”.

Eight Italians, 25 Spaniards, 27 Romanians — and no sign that Revolut paid the ransom Local counts so far: 12 in Ireland, 27 in Romania, 25 in Spain, 8 in Italy, according to the media. Revolut has not published its own country list. It still says only a “limited” number. No evidence it paid a ransom. IAmNotAVillain posted a demand for 6,000 XMR, about $3m, with a 24-hour clock. Revolut told Reuters it had had no direct contact and no demand. The deadline passed. Nothing public followed. Italy is investigating two separate claims. One is settled enough: Revolut did hand over customer files. The other is not: the group’s story that it stole 147 GB from the Interior Ministry. Sole 24 Ore reports that the Postal Police have found no confirmed breach of ministry systems so far. Investigators still do not know whether a real PEC account was taken over or only copied. Giulia Pastorella (Azione) says Undersecretary Ferro used the figure of eight Italian customers to avoid the real question — how a government mailbox was used. She adds that attacks over certified email almost doubled in 2025 (CERT-AgID) and that a black market exists for institutional PEC accounts. How it started. For months, mail arrived from a real Italian government domain. Revolut sent identity documents, selfies, statements and Bitcoin histories. Later, it checked with the agency, blocked the address and told those customers. The app was not broken into. The money did not move. The files did. Three warnings were in that correspondence. The sender was a local-authorities PEC at the Reggio Calabria prefecture. The letter inside was framed as a European Investigation Order, which in Italy only a prosecutor or a judge can issue. Staff then told the sender to put the Cyprus crypto company on the letterhead instead of the Italian branch, and still sent the files. The 680 people on the list are waiting to see whether their documents are offered for sale. The Italian government has not yet said how that official mailbox was used.

Despite the recent Revolut news, for the past few weeks, I've been down a rabbit hole learning about Oleg Tinkov, founder of the Russian bank Tinkoff and now Bank Plata in Mexico. What a man, what an incredible story. Hustle is the way. Don't call him an oligarch, because he grew all the businesses himself from the start; he is an entrepreneur. One interesting detail is that he failed to become the first ouside investor in @Revolut and @Nubank. @NStoronsky and @velez_david came to see him (not at the same time), Oleg would have taken 30% of each company for $1M or less, but he did not do it. It seems Oleg did not know how to assess the risk. It was outside his control, something he didn't understand well even after building one of the first neobanks in the world. He has written books and appeared in many interviews. My knowledge of Russian helped a lot in understanding it. Now, before any souls get sensitive about anything Russia-related and jump into the comments. Just understand who Oleg is: he was forced to sell his stake in Tinkoff Bank for about 5% of the value because he spoke against the Russian government's decision to invade Ukraine. Oleg denounced Russian citizenship and speaks critically about those who remain in Russia and are doing nothing in protest of the government's actions. @RealOlegTinkov, incredible man. @bancoplatamx is an intresting company. I'll be watching closely, for sure.

Revolut did not lose FC Barcelona because of Luís Figo. It signed Figo after the talks were already dead. This week, @CatalunyaRadio’s Barça Reservat (@totcosta @laiatudel @BernatSoler_CAT @xavicampos) said Revolut hired Figo a few months before the summer, and that this is why Barça walked away. First public report: 19 March 2026. El Periódico said Revolut was after the financial-partner slot CaixaBank left in 2025. I posted about it that morning. The Figo campaign did not exist yet. It landed in early May. On 6 May I wrote: “Revolut held sponsorship talks with FC Barcelona, but they got nowhere. So, they hired Luís Figo...” A Revolut spokesperson told me today: “Revolut’s negotiations with Barça closed months before we even signed Figo for our campaigns.” March: talks. They die. May: Figo. September: a podcast decides Figo was why Barça said no. I don’t sit in Laporta’s office. I do know the dates. Do it for the money⚽️

Revolut is no longer hinting. It does not want to be a big lender. That is the clearest thing Nik Storonsky said in Paris. Les Echos asked the awkward bank question: will Revolut finance the economy, including in a crunch? His answer was direct. “Today, the majority of our revenue comes from transaction fees, not loan margins. This makes us a virtually risk-free institution, and we intend to maintain this strategic focus. We also want our model to be as easy as possible to explain to regulators.” He did not say Revolut will never lend. He said lending is not the model. “If our clients want credit cards and loans, we must offer them. But credit will remain a minority part of our business.” And if the book grows: “We will securitise these loans to maintain the leanest possible structure and a very low level of credit risk.” That is similar to what Antoine Le Nel said about lending as about 5% of the mix. Nik has now made it official. Credit is a product line, not the engine. The engine is still fees. The balance sheet stays thin. The story to supervisors stays simple. That is how Revolut wants to look like a bank without becoming one. Mortgages already exist in Lithuania. The French licence is meant to unlock cards, loans and, later, home loans. None of that changes the weighting. “That may happen one day”, about turning into HSBC or Barclays, “but it’s not a priority. For now, we’re focusing on simple, standardised products.” The interesting tension is outside Europe. Nubank, Plata, SoFi and Chime live in markets where credit is the product. Cards, points, instalments, the whole loop. Nik knows that very well about the US. “It’s a credit-driven market, using credit cards, points, and discounts. This model is financed by high interchange fees.” They have pre-approval on a US banking licence. “Once we have the licence, we can launch our credit card with numerous benefits. I’m convinced it will be a success.” The existing US business, he said, is already profitable with no marketing spend. Becoming a bank is how they accelerate it. So the open question is not whether Revolut will offer credit. It is whether it can stay credit-light and still be relevant, especially in the US and Latin America. A rewards card funded by interchange is not the same as building a Nubank-style credit engine. Securitisation is the workaround: originate, sell the risk, keep a fee, keep the balance sheet light. Nik’s answer to the “you will starve the real economy of loans” is “What we’re doing is introducing competition and driving prices down. It’s not about reducing the banks’ profit pool to the point where they can no longer lend.” It's clear that the original meaning of Nik's saying, “We want to replace banks, simple as that”, has changed. Revolut sees itself as a payments and deposits machine that will sell credit where the market demands it, then try not to own the risk. Whether that is enough against firms that are the credit market, he has yet to prove. Nik made from page of Les Echos

Revolut just gave the clearest IPO signal yet: London and Nasdaq, together Nik Storonsky has stopped sounding hypothetical about an IPO. In an interview with Les Echos, he said Revolut is planning a dual listing on the London Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. That is the cleanest public wording I have seen. Not “we might”. Planning. The US preference is blunt. More buyers. Institutions, hedge funds, asset managers, and a large retail base. London stays in the picture. He thinks the fight for the shares will be fiercest in New York. He also wants a real US brand, because customers who use the product are more likely to turn up in the IPO. That sounds to me like an IPO well after the US bank launch. 2026 P&L guidance Revolut’s 2025 accounts: about $6B revenue, $2.3B pre-tax profit, and a 38% pre-tax margin. Fifth year in a row. Gross margin was 78%, down from 81% in 2024. In the interview, he put last year at $6B revenue and $1.7B net income, and said 2026 will be higher, with margins “around 80%… in line with those of the tech industry.” That 80% is gross margin. It is roughly what they already reported last year. Profit per customer still lags banks because Revolut does not lend like a bank. Return on capital is what matters to a public-market buyer: fewer third parties, fewer bankers, more of the stack running itself. That is the story they will take to investors. Fees first. Credit if customers ask for it, then securitise it. Stay thin. Revolut Business now sits underneath that. He said it crossed €1bn in revenue and a million customers. Just months ago, as I remember, it was around 800,000. The UK used to be half the book. Not anymore. Higher margins than consumer, and growing faster. The five-year line is familiar: hundreds of millions of customers, top three in the markets that count. The risk he actually named is regulation. More licences, more products, more complexity. If they list, the question is whether they can keep those software-like gross margins after they start living more like a bank. A dual listing is no longer a rumour. It is the plan he is willing to say out loud. Stay tuned for what Nik said about lending, coming out next.

Hackers want $3 million by tomorrow. Revolut says nobody has called. Italy has opened a file. IAmNotAVillain put a clock on a site: 6,000 Monero (about $3m), pay in 24 hours, or the packs go on sale (FT). Reuters asked Revolut. The answer: no direct contact, no demand. The actor made the ask public. Revolut hasn't used channels to open dialogue. In Italy, the picture moved. Reggio Calabria prosecutors have a case (LaPresse). Postal Police are on the PEC. The DNA — national anti-mafia and counter-terrorism directorate — has been looped in because a government mailbox is in play, not because anyone has proved a mafia job (ANSA). The Garante is asking other banks how they check official mail (La Stampa). Interior Ministry has not confirmed the box. Some coverage slips into “Italian hackers.” That is a jump. What they have is an Italian official channel. Who sat at the keyboard remains unknown. The method is clearer if you take Duel / Korra, who say they spoke to the same actor. They scraped public Bitcoin addresses and txids, dumped hundreds on Revolut as a fake European Investigation Order, and asked who sat behind each one. Spray and pray, hoping they find "whales". Korra says they saw the .emls: folders with IDs, selfies, statements. Three things in those emails should have stopped by a competent officer. 1. The envelope was a prefettura Enti locali PEC in Reggio Calabria — local-authorities admin (entilocali.prefrc@pec.interno.it). The PDF inside looked like it was from the Postal Police / Milan procura / an EIO. Wrong address, wrong instrument. 2. An EIO in Italy is a judicial act issued by a prosecutor or judge. A prefettura cannot issue one. 3. The letterhead was wrong. Staff wrote back and told them to address Revolut Digital Assets Europe Ltd in Cyprus, not “UAB Italian Branch” (Korra). That is fixing the attacker’s homework and still fulfilling. Three flags. A live PEC was treated as enough. A person I believe is inside the firm told me, "They are so scared of government agencies they are almost over-compliant." Revolut still will not confirm the number. FT and my other channels put it at about 680. Nicola Vicino is GM of the Italian branch of Revolut. Not the person who hit send, but I believe he has questions to answer. What happened. From spring to September, mail authenticated on a real Italian government domain asked for KYC. Revolut sent identity documents, selfies, statements and Bitcoin histories. Eventually, Revolut found out it was a scam, blocked the address, and told those customers. Not a hack of the app. Money stayed. Files left. People on that list are not debating PEC law. They are waiting to see if a pack with their face and their chain history is sold. Others watching from the sidelines are asking a simpler question: if official-looking mail is enough, how much of this bank is process and how much is judgment.