1058. News: Revolut’s $200bn ambition, TikTok’s creator card, and Lloyds digitises homebuying

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1:31Hello and welcome to episode 1058 of FinTech Insider News, brought to you by 11FS, the five-time consultancy of the year that works with financial providers big and small to build the next generation of financial services. I'm Benjamin Ensor, Director of Research and Strategy at 11FS. To help me unpack the biggest and most interesting stories from fintech and financial services from the past week, I'm joined by a brilliant panel of three guests. First up, we have a welcome to the show for Alicia Kuprienko, Industry Lead of Finance at AppsFlyer. Welcome to the podcast. Please, can you let our listeners know a little bit about AppsFlyer and a little bit about your role there?

2:12Sure. Thank you, Benjamin. Thank you for invitation. I'm industry lead for finance at AppsFlyer. At AppsFlyer, we work with fintech companies on their key questions. Where are their best customers coming from and what makes them stay? So we are marketing cloud and we help businesses to understand their ad spend across different channels. And in my role, I work as an embedded consultant, helping fintech companies to understand user behavior and to make better decisions on where to invest for growth. Thank you for having me. You're very welcome. And it's also a welcome back to the podcast for Maria Harris, chair of the Open Property Data Association.

3:02It's really great to have you on the podcast. It's been a big few weeks for sort of open finance and open data more widely. Can you introduce yourself or remind our listeners of your role and what the Open Property Data Association does? Yeah, it's amazing to be back, Benjamin. Thank you so much. Marie Harris, I am chair of the Open Property Data Association, which we founded three years ago. Most of your listeners will probably remember me from mortgages. I've been in mortgages for 20 years and I was part of the team who created Atom Bank and had the absolute delight of creating the UK's first digital mortgage and now working with the property and mortgage industry to do the same for the whole of the home buying process.

3:45So OPDA, Open Property Data Association is an independent trade body, we're a trade association and our members cover lots of the property mortgage lending, mortgage intermediary and prog tech market all working together to digitize the online buying process. Amazing. Well, welcome back. Okay, well, we have a panel, so let's get started. So our first story is that Revolut is chasing a 200 billion US dollar valuation ahead of its initial public offering or IPO. So Revolut is aiming to raise 200 billion dollars as it eyes an IPO within the next couple of years, potentially making it more valuable than the combined market capitalizations of Barclays, Societe General, and Deutsche Bank.

4:32Revolut posted record results in 2025, with$2.3 billion in gross profit on$6 billion in revenue, and now operates 11 product lines, each of which generate over a million dollars annually. Chief Executive Nick Strzorowski says a listing is two years away, framing it as a move to build trust, while also hinting at a US IPO, citing deeper liquidity and the firm's push for an American banking license. Now this comes as UK regulators and the British Treasury meet fintech unicorns during UK fintech week amid mounting pressure to try and keep high growth firms listing in London rather than New York. So let's start with the big picture.

5:19200 billion is a big valuation. Lesia, is this a reflection of sort of Revolut's fundamentals catching up with its ambition? What do you think? I would actually push back on the fundamentals catching up because I think the fundamentals were always there. What's changed in this story is a narrative. Revolut now has a UK banking license. As you mentioned, 11 product lines with each doing 100 million pounds. And they are profitable. So this combination in general gives investors a story that they can tell with confidence. and$200 billion isn't really about today's performance. It's a bet on whether they can crack lending and the U.S.

6:19That's where the upside sits, but also where are the risks. And I think the end of this story and the valuation will heavily depend on this, on execution of the credit and what's going to happen in the U.S. So that's my opinion. Yeah, I think that's a really great point because you're right. If they can succeed in the United States, and, you know, there's some skepticism, given that we've seen other European digital banks sort of struggling to get approval or win customers, that would make a huge difference and potentially really grow those revenues. Maria, what is Revolut now? I mean, it does many things.

7:01I mean, we know it's a bank now because it's finally got the UK banking license in addition to the European one that it had previously. But is it a bank? Is it a financial platform? I mean, it started as a FX, you know, foreign exchange app, right? What do you think Revolut is or does that not even matter? It's just whatever its customers want it to be. I don't know. Well, there's definitely some more thing going on, isn't there? I remember talking about the, you know, the first fintech unicorn and a billion valuation being breaking news. And now we're talking about 200 billion, like it's just the next, you know, the next kind of iteration of that.

7:37It's definitely a great example of something that started off as a tech plan to take costs out and make a process easier and then apply that same thinking to disrupt lots of different bits of financial services. And you can see they're on a really clear trajectory now to you know whether this has becomes a kind of global financial super financial app that you can do lots of different things in and and use it to kind of do your financial almost like financial wallet financial passport whatever you want to call it wherever you are in the world and so yeah I'm well the numbers a bit big and a bit scary I'm actually not surprised that that's the scale of the ambition because there's a lot of the there's a lot of the world's banking to be disrupted.

8:21Cracking Europe was great. Getting their UK banking license is a huge tick in the box. Next step, the US. But after that, I think if they can crack the US, then Asia, Africa, all up for grabs. I think there's possibly some other digital banks elsewhere in the world that might have something to say about that. But yes, it's a huge, huge, huge opportunity. one of the things that really surprises me here or seems surprising here is that the valuation is greater than Deutsche Bank, Barclays, Societal General and so on all put together these are huge banks that while they actually now have probably far fewer retail customers than Revolut still have much much bigger business volumes doing huge amounts of corporate banking and so on so the amount of revenue they're generating the amount of business they're doing is still vastly greater than what Revoli is doing.

9:18But Alessio, I mean, you're sort of saying this is a future valuation, isn't it? It's that valuation is based on future revenue, future growth. It's kind of investors betting forward. Is that right? Yeah, I do believe that it's kind of a bet. And it's also a bet on the conversion, I would say, because investors are not valuating by$200 billion just because Revolut is present in 40 or more countries or they have 70 billion customers. Now they're actually betting on their capability to make revenue out of these customers. So it's a bet on conversion in this case. What do you think? I mean, I think people want to have a slice of the action, don't they?

10:10I think investors are looking for growth stories. They're looking for exciting things. There's people who feel they've missed out on, you know, pick your favorite stock. But, you know, people who missed out on Tesla or missed out on Anthropik or whatever. And so, you know. So, I think there's sort of excitement in a way that just isn't about a Deutsche Bank or a Barclays. so I think it is very tempting to put a high valuation on that because you know you're trying to buy a piece of the future and because we've seen other stocks shoot up and so I think that does naturally attract investors. It does feel like traditional bank valuations have been fairly suppressed for a long time though if you go back to kind of pre-global financial crisis and you look at bank book values they were a lot higher than they are now So it does feel like valuations for kind of what you would have classed as your standard tier one.

11:06Well-known banks are still very suppressed. I'd be interested to see if Revolut do IPO in two years, whether or not you see a halo effect on some of the incumbent banks and actually put some confidence back into the banking sector as a good investable market. That's a really, really interesting point, isn't it? Because, of course, you know, before the financial crisis, it turned out that some banks were actually sitting on a whole stack of dodgy debt. sitting on some very dubious mortgages and so on. Of course, we saw a number of them, like Northern Rock and so on, actually disappear. So actually, investors are sort of right to be a bit skeptical in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis.

11:44But yeah, I take your point that has that been overdone? Has the industry really learned the lessons from the global financial crisis? Or are we starting to see sort of bad debt creep back in? I want to pick up on something else that Nick Stronsky apparently said about, you know, going public was about sort of building trust. Maria, I'd be interested in your perspective on this. Do we think that consumers, customers necessarily even know whether companies are public or private and necessarily trust public companies more? Do you think there's something in that? Or is it maybe just as a little bit of a branding thing of, oh, I could be a shareholder and, you know, it's nice to sort of buy a little bit of a company that you do business with.

12:28Yeah, perception is reality, isn't it? So, and you were saying before about creating that kind of excitement if there's an IPO and the opportunity for people to invest. So there's definitely some validation in there, isn't there, and some endorsement that if you do IPO and investors then invest that kind of money and value your company at that point, that there is public awareness around that, but it creates that kind of energy and public excitement that there's an opportunity to then be part of that and potentially grow with a company or to make some you know make some kind of asset gain out of it so there's definitely some public awareness and visibility I think there's a perception as well that if you are listed and publicly trading from a from a consumer perspective that there's more transparency and that there's more accountability and that for somehow you know because you're a listed company that you are more regulated even if that's not actually true i think the perception for most public is that that is the case and they would trust a public company where they can go and look you up and see and and see how your price is changing every day and see what other people in the market are doing so yeah i think it's definitely it creates an energy and creates an excitement but it's a yeah a validation a public endorsement i think that you're a big company and big enough for investors to invest in you and therefore yourself.

13:47The other really interesting question here is whether Revolut will list in London or list in New York if it does. I mean, it's interesting timing with the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority meeting fintech unicorns that Revolut is still signaling that it may go to New York, which means that British retail investors would largely lose out on the opportunity to sort of take part in an IPO. Lesia, do you think Revolut will go to the States? I mean, in some ways, it isn't really a British business. I mean, yes, it's headquartered in London, but, you know, the people who work there are from all across Europe.

14:27The customers are all across Europe. It's not really a British business necessarily, is it? So maybe there's no logic to listing in London. What do you think? I think that actually Revolut is fundamentally a London story. And this actually matters from the founder story, including. And in my opinion, UK can compete on talent, on regulation and brand. But when it comes to capital markets, debt, liquidity, the US wins. And that's not just the opinion, that's just the structure of the market. So with these talks, the honest question is, what is the UK actually competing here for? Are they trying to keep the company or they want to keep the listing?

15:15Because this might require different things from regulators. And the treasury meetings this week are the start, but the window is genuinely closing. We have a case of WISE that was listed publicly in London. in UK. And if Revolut announces a US IPO, it will be a significant moment for UK's credibility for a home for high growth fintechs. Yeah, it's going to be a big swing moment, isn't it? You know, it's definitely the credibility and the depth of the UK capital markets is certainly being increasingly called into question. Okay, let's move on then to our next story, which is that Visa and TikTok are rolling out a creator card.

16:07So the two companies have launched a creator card and business account for UK content creators, which is designed to give faster access to earnings from TikTok Live and help creators manage their finances more like a business. The card allows creators to access income more quickly rather than waiting for payouts to settle and separates business and personal finances, which is something 94 % of creators say they want. This tackles a key issue in a creator economy, irregular and delayed income, nearly half of creators report late or inconsistent payments, with many saying it affects their ability to operate or reinvest in their work.

16:44With an estimated 200 million creators globally, and the market projected to reach$500 billion by 2027, this move signals growing interest in building financial infrastructure specifically for creators as a distinct economic segment.

17:03So this is sort of being positioned by the two companies as one of the first sort of creator-specific debit cards. Maria, what do you think? Do you think creators are a specific group? I mean, people always talk about how, you know, say freelancers often find it difficult to manage their finances. Are creators just really another sort of subcategory of freelancers or are they more special than that? Yeah, it's a great place to start. I think I'm probably the wrong generation to be talking about this, but I think it's something different. I think it's something new and of itself. And creation always sat in different bits of industry and now it's become a thing in its own right.

17:46And lots of people who started on TikTok did it as kind of side projects or so you know while while either working in a gig economy or working full time and doing it because it was their passion and now that it's become you know really democratized and it's a really good way to have control over finance and content and and and how you seem to be out there I think that the demand for financial services products to sit alongside that has I think it'll generate its own industry and so yeah I think it's actually become an industry in its own right and the pace that it's growing at and the the demand for the content to be so quickly turned over and so instantly created there's definitely like that that need for kind of instancy and gratification so why would you not want to be paid the same way and have access to funding that enables you to satisfy that demand but also to satisfy your needs so yeah I think it's going to I think this will become become a job category in its own right it's interesting that you jumped straight, I think, to sort of thinking the creators are content creators, which, of course, naturally, there are a lot of content creators on TikTok.

18:51But I was sort of thinking about, you know, people who sort of create handicrafts, people who make sort of jewelry or knitwear, you know, all sorts of stuff. I mean, just all the wonderful creative things that people do and sell. Alicia, do you have a side gig of your own? Do you have your own sort of business sideline? Do you have siblings or friends who do? What do you think of this story? Yeah, I think it's much wider. First of all, it's not only about like creating something like a content and being a blogger. It's about their products that they're trying to sell through the platform itself.

19:24This is one thing. On the personal note, I do not do that, but I do photography. And if I would think about myself posting something and then doing some live TikToks and then gathering these diamonds that could be a potentially a way of income for me through our like way, then it is important for me to have a possibility of the financial services supporting that. But also on the other hand, I think there is like a bigger picture here about this whole process and what TikTok and Visa does. Yeah, I can explore on that more if you want me. Yeah, I mean, tell us, what do you think? So I think that when we're talking about what TikTok is doing is something that banks were struggling with for a long time.

20:23They want to bring financial services directly into the platform where users already spent a lot of time. So creatives, they are not like... actively looking for the business account. The product is coming to them inside the environment that is very familiar. They use it every day. And it's very different distribution models. And traditional banking has to spend marketing budgets and has to acquire users through different channels, while TikTok has already that attention. And now they are turning that into financial product. On the other hand, there was a study that said that Visa is actually trying to capture quite a big market.

21:10And by 2027, it's going to be like$500 billion. So if they will do that before any new bank or another player does it first, they are actually tapping into quite big audience. And it's not just creators. Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's a huge audience. We do a lot of customer research at 11FS, and it's really interesting how often when you're talking to people, how many people have a sideline or a passion project and so on and want to be doing something maybe different to what they do, want to set up their own businesses and so on. It varies from country to country around the world, but there are so many people around the world who do want to set up their own business, but just sort of feel that they need more support and more help.

21:54But one thing I'm really interested in is this point you're making about Visa, because actually what TikTok is doing here is maybe not so different from what, let's say, Grab has done in Southeast Asia or Uber, where you've got drivers or other sort of people who are using those platforms and earning through those platforms, and then they're getting paid through those platforms. And to the point you're making it, it's about sort of making it easier for them to get their earnings faster. but here TikTok instead of doing it itself or ByteDance doing it itself it's partnered with Visa and that's quite an interesting thing isn't it because Visa of course Maria I don't know what you think about this but you know Visa of course isn't a bank I mean it's a payments company but it usually has sort of card issuers and other firms so it's an interesting question like well who's kind of managing the customer relationship here is there you know it's an interesting question like how is this how is this actually working yeah these have definitely moved more into the kind of becoming the rails space haven't they in the same way that payments used to rely on so many different third parties and different gateways to get through where and all of those gateways have been shortened as um things have been digitized and the it's become easier to move that money around so i guess if you were visa you would you'd be in a place where if you can make money instant and digital cards are kind of fairly ubiquitous now, most of us pay with our phones and things rather than physical cards or physical money, then yeah, you could almost get to a point where that kind of finance stuff becomes really liquid.

23:30And actually what you're doing is giving the control back to the consumer and that they control the flow of the money and you're providing the gateway and a safe route for them to do that without them having to worry about connecting services together or worrying about sharing card details or bank details or connecting to third parties or anything else. You just make it really simple for them to connect to one place where you worry about all of the other stuff for them. I think it's a control. I think it gives the customer the control back. Yeah. Do we think that we'll start seeing more and more services being added to sort of platforms like this?

24:05Because, I mean, this is TikTok, talk but of course there's dozens and hundreds of platforms that people are using around the world to create products to sell products and so on do we think we're going to see more things like insurance and credit and so on getting added to this over time yeah you can definitely see credit coming in because that's kind of a natural evolution for it isn't it especially for let's say people who are creating um things that they sell or that whether they're creating supply demand chain. But you could also see it being used to do like tokens and you can have credits where you save and rather than take money out, you save your credits and then you can use them for other things and you can use them across platforms.

24:44And let's say you can see the whole financial position of what you generate and what you spend becoming very liquid and very fluid and and not being so product specific or not being put in specific buckets as in this is money that at the end, or this is a credit product, or this is a lawn, or this is an overdraft, or this is my credit card spend. You can see it all kind of merging into one. Certainly a super, super interesting story. So, you know, congratulations to the teams at Visa and TikTok. It'll be very, very interesting to see how this evolves over the next couple of years. Okay. Well, on that note, we will just take a quick pause here and we will be back very shortly.

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26:19Okay, before we get back into the news, a quick heads up. Bite-sized, our weekly newsletter, now lands in your inbox every Friday. If you're after a five-minute roundup of the biggest fintech stories of the week, it's got you covered. Then come back on Monday and tune into the podcast for the full analysis. You can subscribe to bitesized at 11fs.com slash emails or drop the link in the episode description too. Now back to the news. Our next story is that Lloyd's Banking Group is proposing to cut waiting times with fully digital home buying service. Lloyd's Banking Group has partnered with estate agency Connells and conveyancing firm LMS to launch a fully digital home buying service across England and Wales.

27:01The goal is to tackle one of the biggest pain points in financial services, the home buying process, which currently takes around five months on average in England and Wales, often longer. The new service aims to reduce delays by moving checks earlier in the process, digitizing and sharing data between parties, and eliminating duplication. Using LMS's National Property Transaction Network, information like identity, property details, and sources of funds can be captured once and reused across the entire transaction. So, let's start with a big picture. The home buying process is often described as slow and complex.

27:42it's complicated in any country but England and Wales have a system that seems almost designed to make it a little bit more stressful for people who are going through what's already often one of the most important purchases they ever do in their life Maria this feels like an important moment there's this huge opportunity to sort of try and modernize it but it's really hard how significant is this? how big is this? It's absolutely enormous and I'm hugely delighted that the Story Broken has had the response that it had. And so happy that it's our OPDA members who have made it happen. There are other people involved in this who weren't mentioned in the headlines who are also OPDA members, including Credis, Armalytics, Novus and also TM Group and Moverly who were actually founding members of OPDA three years ago.

28:38So yeah, really delighted to see it happen. But this is actually five years into the journey to get us to this point. As you say, home buying is a horrendous customer experience. It's frequently ranked in the top two, top three worst experiences that we ever go through. We're generally moving house in life. In life in total, wow. Yeah, the only thing that ranks worse than home moving consistently is dealing with bereavement, which is just such a horrendous indictment on the industry. and yeah I mean the demand failure rate is just yeah it's and it's heartbreaking and you talk to anyone about you know who's been through the buying or selling of a property and everyone has a story and to tell you or know somebody who's got a story and they're rarely they're rarely good stories so yeah there's a lot to fix so let's say this journey actually started five years ago and it started with the Home Buying Selling Council which is a government industry collaboration group and it was talking about how we give consumers better access to property data upfront at the start of the transaction.

29:44And that was material information, like how do you make sure that customers have got the information they need to make an informed buying decision. And that work was originally led by Trading Standards and now sits with the Competition Market Authority under existing consumer protection. So it was the first time really, I've been in, let's say, mortgages 20 years. When I joined the industry in 2005, we used to average 12 weeks to completion. And when the Homebuy and Selling Council started in 2017, 2018, we'd gone up to 16 weeks, which we thought was horrendous. And now we're averaging 23 weeks.

30:19So yeah, it's time that we made a real impact. But it's the first time I think I've seen in 20 years that I've been in the industry where we've had this level of industry and government collaboration on data standards and prioritising what property data should be digitised first and what impact that would have on the process. And for our firms who've been putting that into practice through various testings and pilots and beta, so the likes of LMS and Connells and Lloyds, who've done a great job leading that work, and what it did is it evidenced the need for a kind of a much broader whole-scale transformation of the whole of the property market and we're doing it for residential first but actually this it's applicable to commercial and land and buy to let and lots of other types of transactions and so the the work started with how do we make sure that we have verified sources of data the primary source of the data.