1084. News: Ant's $1.2bn Raise, Teya Doubles Down on SMEs and Revolut Lands licence in Australia

26:15Laura Watkins:tell me more Alessandra about the sort of AI inclusion in it so part of the press release the launch includes AI assisted invoice processing just out of curiosity, like, is this coming from a customer demand or is that an internal decision to use AI just to, you know, simplify the product for the end customer as opposed to the customer being bothered whether or not you are using AI? I would say that, like, we had a, like, while a lot of companies said, like, started putting AI everywhere, we said, like, we're not going to do that until we find, Like we believe that we have something that can actually be AI and not just like getting rebranded because now it's a hype.

27:00So what we are taught with AI work is really redefined the way we work. And it has been like this amazing thing that I believe a lot of people are leveraging. And naturally, I would say like bigger, more established companies tend to have a bit of an advantage on like learning about all those stuff. and also in the use of it. And that started with like, we said, let's ask some of our clients and we would see some of them have really changed their setup to use it while others were like, I tested, but it's like, I'm not actually engaging. And the numbers were quite surprising for me, at least like we have 40 % of our clients not using at all.

27:42And then we said, how we try to also not create an AI product that is only about Taya? because I feel that a lot of the AI products out there that come like as something else from like bank, financial services, or even like different sorts of tools, they're an AI focus on like the data that they have or the things related to like finance. We said we don't want to help them only with that. So how we create an AI that if they want to say, answer this Google review for me, that will help. how they can say like create my next Instagram post. It can help. What are my busy hours of the day? It can help.

28:23My tax filings. It can do it. So it's a bit of like how we bring the LLMs and everything that comes into an interface that our clients already use it. Because I think from a difference when you think about business banking versus consumer banking, is that our clients, they use our product every day, multiple times a day. So we are already an interface for them. It's not like something that they use occasionally. So why we don't bring something of AI there? And this can grow and compound. So this was a bit of the idea behind it. And what we have seen so far since the launch is that the interface of how people will engage with financial services, I think nobody knows really how it's going to be.

29:12And it's been interesting to see how a lot of our clients are using like the AI to say, create me this pay by link or pay this bill instead of using the regular interface that we have. So it's been interesting to see that there are so many use cases for it. And we spoke a little bit about like international payments cross border, especially the UK is a market that there's so many like international business owners that sometimes like prefer to use their first language. AI also helps with that because they can say pay this bill in whatever language that is instead of having to go to like all the processes in English just because they live here.

29:50So we're seeing a bit of that. And what is good is that it's easy to compound. And the more we learn, the better it gets as well.

29:59Laura Watkins:Wow, that's so interesting. Kind of becoming like a business partner for your customers rather than just giving them a tool and letting them just figure it out for themselves. that's very, very cool. Well, thank you so much for telling us all about that. Unfortunately, we are out of time. But yeah, congratulations on the launch. It sounds fantastic. And yeah, please do come back and tell us more about it on future episodes. But on that note, we're going to take a quick pause right here back very shortly.

30:39Laura Watkins:Before we get back to the news, we've got some big news of our own. We've just launched our latest After Dark event and tickets are available now. Join us at London's Village Underground on Wednesday the 17th of September for a live recording of this podcast, Fintech Insider News. Head to 11fs.com forward slash After Dark to claim your free ticket today and we'll put a link in the as well. Back to the news. And our next story this week is that Revolut has secured an Australian banking license. Revolut has secured a full authorized deposit taking institution or ADI license in Australia, allowing it to launch as a licensed bank in the country and marking its first banking entity in the Asia Pacific region.

31:25Laura Watkins:The company says it will invest almost 400 million Australian dollars in Australia over the next five years, expanding its product offering to include savings and credit for its more than 1 million Australian customers. The license is the latest step in Revolut's global expansion strategy following the launch of Revolut Bank in Mexico, regulatory approvals in the UAE and Peru, and its ongoing application for a US banking license. Right, Simone, as our resident Aussie on the recording today, it makes sense for me to come to you first. What does this mean for the Australian market? Can you tell us a little bit more about the existing landscape at the moment and where Revolut fits into this?

32:08Laura Watkins:Obviously, we heard they've already got a million customers over there anyway. What difference will the banking license make? Well, first of all, a big congratulations to Matt, who is the CEO of Revolut and his team in Australia. And it's an enormous amount of work that goes into achieving an ADI license, so well done there. I think, look, when I saw this news, I was really pleased. We haven't got the strongest history of neobanks retaining banking licenses in Australia. In our heyday, we had, I think, you know, five or six that had all kind of bubbled up at once. And I used to say at the time that they were like the signal species for the health of the fintech ecosystem.

32:48And then one by one, all those licenses got handed back or they got acquired and gobbled up by one of our larger banks. So it wasn't necessarily the right message to be talking about a signal species at that point. However, Revolut has, to your point, established a million customers before this banking license was awarded. So they're already addressing some of the issues that some of the previous neobanks had. They actually were quite interesting. For about a month there, and I think this was about five or six months ago, you'd get off a plane in any domestic terminal in Australia and you'd walk up the air bridge and down the side would be Revolut's reached a million customers, just a giant banner.

33:32No call to action, just to let you know that they had a million customers. So, really interesting signalling about how popular they already were in the market. What I think the banking licence will do for them is a couple of things. It obviously is another hop in their global connectivity channel. And I think a point of difference with Revolut to some of the other companies in this space, Airwallex and Wise to some extent, they have banking licences in these countries. So they're bringing the financial deposits and instruments into a protected setting. So there's obviously the guarantee on deposits that the government has here, similar to the one in the UK.

34:14The second thing is it does allow them a little bit more margin on things like being able to connect directly into payment systems without going through an intermediary. And when you're looking at, Alessandra mentioned, interchange caps in Europe, ours is reducing in October, so it's closer. So there's less margin in the payment, in the interchange you're making. So that direct connectivity will be really helpful in that respect. I think that they will continue to now build on the momentum that they have with that million customers. There is a strong brand awareness here for them. I think the fact that they have clearly signaled that the domestic investment over the coming years is a great signal for what we can see from them.

34:59And we'll probably see Revolut on our sports teams and racing cars and things like you do with FinTech after they do something like this. But I also think that we'll see some increasing pressure on things like the interest rates that are being offered by Revolute, what the response will be from the incumbents will be really interesting, and how this then puts pressure on things like business banking services and global business banking as well as domestic. So yeah, interesting times and it's a great milestone for them. Yeah, definitely.

35:33Laura Watkins:Thank you for that very comprehensive overview. Sophie, maybe coming to you. Like, obviously, we've sort of talked about a lot of fintechs maturing and sort of the banking license becomes like the ultimate North Star. Why is that sort of so important as these fintechs mature? obviously, as we mentioned, getting various approvals in many different markets. The U.S. still kind of eluding them. The U.K. only just been awarded. Why are they pursuing that as a sort of badge of honor almost? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I think it's really driven by kind of economics rather than vanity. And, you know, over the last couple of years, is we've really moved from this growth at all costs mentality to a more sustainable growth model.

36:25And so with that, it needs to come sustainable unit economics. And the way that you do that is once you have the kind of volume of customers, that's why the kind of word mature in your question is really important is, you know, fintechs are pursuing banking licenses, but only when they've got the scale to make the unit economics happen. Because when you've got a license, you can hold deposits. That's obviously like a great, cheap, sticky product. It also comes with a bit more of a feeling of trust. You know, you have to trust a financial institution quite a lot for them to hold, you know, for them to get your pay paid into that bank account for you to hold the deposit.

37:04It obviously then opens up the balance sheet for you to use in terms of lending and multiple different other products and really kind of, you know, driving the margin on your business up. So, yeah, I think it's an essential part of them evolving and just being able to monetize the million customers that they have more effectively. Definitely.

37:25Laura Watkins:And Alessandra, with your sort of product expertise, Revolut has sort of had the tagline for a while of like the ambition to be the world's first truly global bank. The word truly there may be a diss to HSBC, I'm not sure. But what is that? But how is that vision kind of playing out here? And how realistic is that when you are pushing into so many different locations? Is the experience likely to differ place to place? Or are they trying to go for a sort of, you know, a signature revolute experience no matter where you are? Yeah, what I would say is, and like, I come from Brazil, which is kind of like this continental country.

38:10but it kind of isolated on its own, that maybe Simone believes as well from Australia, in the sense that what I believe, and at least one of the biggest learnings for me from a product perspective, that I believe payments has become a bit of a global product and you have like multiple really big companies like the Stripes, the Adjans and so on that have been able to create this global payment ecosystem because you have the schemes, it's quite regulated in a lot of senses, so it's easier to get there. When we think about banking, I truly believe it's a much harder milestone. Even in Europe where you have one license, one of the things that I say to my team all the time is that there is no United States of Europe.

39:01Even though you have one license, you have all these different payment rails different tax authorities, different ways that you need to address regulations. So it's quite an easy task to become this global business, global banking element. But what I would say is that I think the way to go is to actually not be around the edges and only play more on the cross-border space, but actually securing the licenses and doing the work to be relevant. Otherwise, you're never going to be able to actually replace the ones that are there. And I think from a unit economics perspective and like great businesses are the ones that get principality and the people choose to be with them for the long run.

39:49And I think banks are built around that. So I think the strategy is really on point.

39:54Laura Watkins:Fantastic. And then Stumann kind of building on that relevancy point that Alessandra mentioned, like essentially sort of why Australia, why now? Like, you know, as we said, a million customers, but why is now the right time to kind of really not just have the license, but that huge injection of money that Revolute has also planned to invest in Australia? Like, what does that tell us about their kind of ambitions? I think there is an element and maybe, you know, this is just guessing. We're also in the middle of having a bit of a transition into an environment where we have tiered payment licensing in Australia.

40:33and that's scheduled, it's behind schedule, obviously, but it's meant to happen next year. Some of that addresses stored value facilities, which is where Revolut has been sitting up until this moment. And that stored value facility is going to transition into having more requirements, which does kind of lock up a lot of money in security holdings. It almost makes it, to Sophie's point, around the value of holding a banking license is being able to monetize those deposits. You can't do that if you're a stored value. So I think that timing is really interesting as well.

41:11Revolut's been in Australia for some time since around the same time that they applied for their UK banking license actually. So potentially there was a sequencing there. Australia is often thought of as a bit of a local hub geographically to then push up into Southeast Asia as well. So, there may be some lily pad hopping that we might see from the next. And then more broadly, Australia is an interesting market for fintech at the moment. We're seeing a lot of companies maturing, but in a more organic way than we might have done in years past where we would have seen investment cycles being announced and accelerating.

41:57We're actually seeing growth through stabilising business models. So, So there is an element of the fintech industry is maturing, but at a more stable pace than we might have seen in the past. So maybe all of those factors combined into one.

42:11Laura Watkins:Brilliant. Yeah, that's a really good overview. We don't obviously cover Australia as much as some regions on this podcast. So it's really good for like to kind of lay the foundations of why this is such a big move. Sophie, just to finish this section off, speaking of big moves, producers have a slightly naughty question for you. So if a banking license becomes table stakes kind of going forward, what is the next differentiator that you would potentially look out for? Yeah, spicy, naughty question. So I think, you know, scale is one thing, but really the ability to be global is just one side of it.

42:52the other side is being local, being able to understand your customers quite in-depthly, being able to reach them where they need to be reached and be able to create products that are customized to different people's circumstances. So I think, you know, we talked a lot kind of a couple of years ago about in context, FinTech and InsureTech and kind of rising products at the right time and I think Prevolut, one of the products it did, which is kind of exciting, is you know, it saw that you booked flights to, you know, a holiday destination and then it surfaced travel insurance. So I think while the global scale is really exciting and the kind of offering of more traditional banking products is good for economics, where the interesting and fun part comes is using all of the data from the huge amount of customers to create more personalized products that are delivered in context and at the right time.

43:54Can I add something to that answer which builds onto your previous question Laura that point around honing in on your individual customers in a local sense potentially they were doing a little bit of that as they thought about the sequencing of their banking licenses and looking at the corridors between where their users were traveling, were spending money. There is quite a large UK diaspora down in Australia and potentially there is that establishment of corridors between where people are spending that built on their sequencing strategy globally.

44:29Laura Watkins:Fantastic. Well, we will have to keep an eye on both of that and see if what you predicted turns out to be the case. But on that note, we're just going to take a quick pause here and back very shortly.

44:45Laura Watkins:Okay, now for a quick look at stories we didn't have time to cover in full. This one comes from the papers. WISE launches international transfer service in Chile. So WISE has expanded into Chile, allowing customers and businesses to send Chilean pesos to more than 40 currencies across 160 countries through its international payment network. The launch gives Chilean customers access to WISE's multi-currency account, enabling them to hold and convert funds across multiple currencies while receiving international payments using local account details. The company says its transfers use the mid-market exchange rate with transparent upfront pricing and that 75 % of payments settle in under 20 seconds, with 96 % completed within 24 hours.

45:30Laura Watkins:Wise says the move reflects growing demand for cross-border financial services in Chile, where outbound remittances reached$2.27 billion in 2025. The launch also expands the company's footprint in Latin America following early rollouts in Brazil and Mexico as it continues to grow its global network, which now serves 19 million active customers. So this one is super interesting. Obviously, LATAM is not a new market for WISE, given those rollouts that were just mentioned in Brazil and Mexico. But it is an interesting example of how appealing the LATAM market has become. You know, Revolut, Nubank, all stealing a lot of customers in that space.

46:14Laura Watkins:It's a huge competitive growth market for financial services. And the opportunity kind of goes beyond remittances. As more people work internationally, study abroad, run businesses across borders, the demand for cross-border financial services continues to grow and remains a pain point for many people that WISE are obviously best placed to try and solve for them. and WISE has consistently differentiated itself by challenging the traditional economics of international money transfers, mostly focusing on that transparency piece, speed and customer trust. So it's very interesting that they're kind of doubling down on that in this market.

46:53Laura Watkins:There's obviously a huge opportunity space, that$2.27 billion of remittances in 2025 that I mentioned. So there's obviously a huge space for them to play in here. and obviously more broadly we're seeing fintechs compete on a global financial infrastructure space rather than just products people don't just want to move money internationally now it's more important to make cross-border financial services feel as simple as domestic ones and that's sort of the story of why is in a nutshell so it'll be interesting to see how they make a splash in Chile so I'm going to take us now into our and finally story one of our more light-hearted or light geisty stories of the week.

47:33Laura Watkins:And this one is that Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has become his biggest global box office opening ever. The story in Forbes, and please do stay with me, I promise there is a fintech link. So Christopher Nolan's latest film, The Odyssey, has become the biggest global opening of his career, taking more than$264 million worldwide during its opening weekend, which has exceeded industry expectations and been the biggest ever opening for Nolan and his lead actor, Matt Damon. It's also the first feature film shot entirely using IMAX cameras with premium IMAX screenings accounting for almost a quarter of all ticket sales.

48:07Laura Watkins:Despite the strong start, it reportedly needs around$625 million to break even, reflecting its estimated$250 million production budget and$125 million marketing spend. All right, a lot of big numbers there. Before we dig into that, has anyone seen it yet? No, I'm trying. But like in London, like we have the IMAX 70mm, but there's like two of them and they're sold out until October. So I'm like, I don't know if I go watch it and then go there or if I wait until I can get the tickets. So did you say you have? I have, yeah. I did the thing which is I just went and saw it in my local cinema, my local picture house.

48:53didn't see an IMAX but I just I just wanted to be I wanted to be involved in the opening weekend hype and it is epic it is so so good is it okay

49:03Laura Watkins:I'm going tomorrow in the IMAX I'm very excited amazing but I haven't yet seen it yeah I mean just joined some sort of pre-sale and booked a while ago but it was a bit frantic Simone how about you I haven't seen it I studied the Odyssey when I was doing history at school and I'm a little like I won't watch Gladiator because I'm like oh I don't want to see any of that so I'm a little nervous there's some fairly gory bits in the Odyssey so I might wait until it's at home so I can sneak out at the optimal moments and hide. Fair enough yeah yeah I equally studied classics for several years and at uni so I'm like this sort of ticks all of my boxes at the same time as yeah it might be a lot but as I was saying that this is sort of isn't just a film story it's an investment story so kind of studios putting hundreds of millions of dollars behind fewer bigger bets in the hope of a return uh so if you does that sound familiar to you yeah as an investor absolutely i think that is uh so analogous to the the venture market today which is concentration in smaller number of de-risked kind of bets that are rather than kind of the spreading high risk that we as Ventures should absolutely be doing.

50:22You know, everyone at the moment just wants to be an anthropic and chat to BT and it's kind of similar in the film industry. You know, you almost know that the fantastic director like Nolan is going to deliver something incredible, especially with that amount of capital behind it. It's almost like capital becomes a moat as well, in a way. You can only achieve the sort of things that Nolan achieved with the backing that he has. So, yeah, it's very similar. It's very similar.

50:48Laura Watkins:But also kind of related to what Alessandra was talking about, about really wanting to go see it in the IMAX. There's a lot that has been talked about, like the kind of the IMAX experience and that sort of a sort of premium experience that comes with it as well, which is also shown by 23 % of ticket sales coming from IMAX, despite there being, I think I saw a stand as like 40 IMAX cinemas at all, like in the world. So there's definitely a lot to be said for that kind of creating a sort of premium experience that people really want to buy into. Obviously, we're guilty of that, like booking ahead to make sure we can definitely see it in the IMAX.

51:32Laura Watkins:Like, Alessandra, you having to think through whether you want to wait or whether you want to see it sooner and then have the IMAX experience later. What was kind of your thought on kind of customers paying in advance for what they consider to be a better experience? That's definitely something that we can kind of draw some parallels with in our industry as well. What I would say, at least from my side, is I feel that like with our lives between like what is digital, what is physical and so on, there's a lot that has changed on how we like. I love movies. I think I watch like three or four a week.

52:06and when I think about going to the movies, I think there's more about like not only what's new, but about the experience of what you get from being there. And it's interesting to see how, at least like in my local cinema, as much as there is all the news, there are new movies, there's always like a bit of those like old classics that I feel that a lot of people, they're not like what made like the effect of going to a movie. I think it's changed about being this like, oh, let me see this thing before everyone else, but about the experience of being there and enjoying something that you like or going to like a different experience, which I believe the IMAX 70 millimeters creates.

52:49so I and I of course this comes at a price and I think what is happening is that I think movies are becoming a little bit more premium because like maybe the ones that the people that would not splurge on it now prefer streaming so that's a bit of what I maybe that's happening yeah that's

53:09Laura Watkins:a great point like kind of customers are just sort of picking their their lane that they want to spend on and curating the experiences they want to have. Simone, any final thoughts on this one? I think, I wonder whether the choice to do it on this ultra special 70 millimeter IMAX film was an intentional creation of scarcity and premium tickets, or whether it was purely an artistic love that Chris went, let's just do it like this because it deserves it. And people will buy tickets at any movie cinema, but there will be this elevated experience for the cinephiles to really get into the romance of old cinema.

53:52Maybe a bit of both. I think it's a challenging thing to go actively after that premium strategy. Luxury brands, I think, are now reimagining how they do that. So it'll be interesting. I would have loved to hear the decision-making process as they thought about it.

54:10Laura Watkins:Yeah, for sure. I definitely think it could have been a bit of both but also um yeah it is uh it is interesting like how kind of elitist this almost is as a deliberate kind of creative choice um but yes we will see i mean i think you know given the numbers that's already drawn in and the fact to alessandra's point the imax is booked up until the autumn i think it's likely uh to break even on those numbers um but we will see uh and on that note, that concludes today's episode. Thank you so much to my guests. Where can people find out a little bit more about you and your companies? Let's start with you, Alessandra.

54:49Yeah, so people can find more about Taya on Taya.com, but they can also check her LinkedIn or Instagram and find us there. And about me, I'm not so much on social media, but LinkedIn is the place to find me. Brilliant. Thank you. Simone? Very much the same as Alessandra. I'm not on social media, but you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find Paperplane on LinkedIn, or you can find us at paperplane.com.

55:13Laura Watkins:Fantastic. Thank you. And Sophie? I'd love to have a more original answer, but it's exactly the same. Find us on unlock-vc.com. And I'm on LinkedIn. And yeah, I just remember doing this a couple of years ago and everyone would say their Twitter handle, and alas, gone are the days. yeah like I could tell you my truth handle but I haven't actually logged in for about two years so it would be no use to you um you can find me again on LinkedIn uh Laura Watkins or otherwise 11fs.com or on this podcast um thank you so much for listening to today's show if you like what you've heard please make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform of choice and if you really like what you've heard why not share the podcast with a colleague or friend and equally if you want to join the conversation, find us on social media.

56:00Laura Watkins:Just search for 11FS or Fintech Insider. We're probably there. Or email me and the team at podcasts at 11FS.com. Thanks again and goodbye.